Tag Archives: Frankie Coote

CLARE’S county dog warden cannot go into parts of Ennis without garda protection, he has revealed. Frankie Coote, whose house was targeted by an unknown hatchet-wielding assailant just last week, says there are areas of the county capital where it is unsafe for him to do his job. “There are areas in Ennis, I won’t name them, that I can’t go in without the gardaí. I said to one woman who made a complaint [about the treatment of animals] that I can’t go down because they will wreck my house. She just said ‘I don’t give two fs about your house, I’m just worried about the animals’.” He continued, “Three or four times me and the girl working with me here have had to get a garda to go with us. It’s a pity; we are just trying to do our job. It might just be something small like checking a licence or trying to find a stolen dog. It’s …

THE Ennis home of Clare County Dog Warden Frankie Coote came under attack on Wednesday night. Windows of his house were smashed by men wielding hatchets, while his van and his wife’s car were also attacked. Speaking on Thursday Mr Coote said, “It was exactly nine o’clock, I was just going watching the news, and the window of the house came in. I thought it was shotguns, I heard bang, bang, bang, but it was two people attacking the van and the wife’s car with hatchets. There was awful damage done.” He said that confrontation has been a frequent reality of his job, but it is very upsetting having it come to his home. “It was worse for my wife than myself. I’ve been assaulted, different things have happened me to do with my job, but nothing at the house.” Mr Coote said that thousands of euros worth of damage had been done. He said he spoke to one of …

ENNIS’ famous goats are moving to pastures new in County Louth. The animals have been taken to their new home on a mountain farm for safety reasons, according to Clare County Dog Warden, Frankie Coote, who revealed that since straying from their traditional home on the Rocky Road, at least three of the herd have been killed. Mr Coote, who was involved in moving the goats on Wednesday, said he recovered the body of a kid that was struck by a car in recent days. This is in addition to two kids that were electrocuted after wandering into an ESB substation. The goats made headline news across the country and further afield when videos of them roaming around the Kilrush Road were posted on social media. Though their antics were a source of amusement for many, some locals reported that the animals were getting on top of people’s cars, damaging gardens and roaming out onto the road, sparking calls for …

A 65-year old farmer this week pleaded guilty to a charge in connection with the dumping of 12 decomposing animal carcasses from a 300 ft high cliff four years ago in West Clare. At Ennis Circuit Court today (Tuesday), Martin Gerald Foley pleaded guilty to disposing of waste in a manner that is likely to cause environmental pollution on dates unknown between April 20th 2013 and March 13th 2014 contrary to Section 32 (1) of the Waste Management Act. The 12 carcasses were made up of eight horse carcasses and four cattle carcasses. At a previous court date, counsel for Mr Foley, Pat Whyms BL said that his client would be contesting the charge and that the trial would take over one week. Judge Gerald Keys was ready to be impaneled in the case on Tuesday, however, Mr Foley of Lislanihan, Kilkee said ‘guilty judge’ when arraigned on the single charge in court. The guilty plea followed a lengthy Garda …

CLARE dog warden and chair of the ISPCA in the county, Frank Coote has revealed that less than 20 dogs were put down at the county dog pound in 2017. This figure compares to several hundred in 2016 and 1,500 per annum at one stage. When he started in his role, Mr Coote said, more dogs were being put down in Clare than anywhere in Europe. “I’ve never seen it any better. We didn’t have to put down a dog for three months at one stage. In total, we put down 19 dogs in 2017, whereas we used to put down 600 to 700 in previous years in the pound alone,” he explained. “I was putting down 1,500 dogs one time. That’s what was happening. That was about 10 years ago. I used to put down 35 to 40 dogs every Friday. The vet has been in three times in the last month and they were all for vaccination, microchip …

CLARE dog warden Frankie Coote is currently storing the arm of what appears to be a gorilla or chimpanzee in a freezer, as he seeks to establish for certain the precise origin of the limb. Kilrush gardaí were contacted last week, when a member of the public found the arm on the shoreline in Kilkee. However, while Mr Coote said the find is “unusual”, he has experience of coming across exotic animals in his line of work. “I got a call a few years ago from the cattle mart in Scariff, where a giraffe had come in. It turned out it belonged to a circus and it had strayed away. I’ve seen elephants around too. The unusual fact about this is that the limb found in Kilkee is not native here. It’s all guesswork for me,” he said. “We’re appealing that somebody would come forward with a view to establishing what it is and where it came from. Kilrush gardaí …

A FIVE-week-old puppy suffered extensive injuries and was dumped, before dying, in what Clare’s county dog warden has described as “one of the worst things I’ve seen”. The small black terrier was found by a young boy and had a broken back and two broken legs. The cold and wet animal had been thrown in a bush near Our Lady’s Hospital. Mr Coote was contacted and efforts were made to save the pup but he sadly died on the way to the vet. The dog warden believes that an attempt was made to deliberately kill the pup. “It’s terrible what was done. He was in a lot of pain. He had two broken back legs and his back was severed, you could clearly see it was broken. Fair play to the young boy for having the sense to bring him to us. It was traumatising and terrible for the pup but it was also terrible for that young boy to …

THREE Labrador pups are lucky to be alive after being cruelly thrown into a river. However, two more, probably from the same litter, did not have the same fortunate escape when their carcasses were found in the water weighed down with rocks. County dog warden Frankie Coote was called to the scene at Frure in Lissycasey earlier this week. It is believed that the culprit may have thrown the animals from the bridge under the cover of darkness, taking advantage of high waters following recent rain. He said that two of the pups were saved from certain death because they landed on a ledge by the river’s edge. The third managed to make its way out into a nearby field, where it was rescued by a local person who has kindly given the dog a good home. Following a search of the area, Mr Coote made the grim discovery of the decomposed carcasses of the other two pups. Mr Coote believes …