Volunteer group to discuss animal welfare issues

A volunteer group that hopes to successfully address animal issues in the CNMI will hold a meeting June 6 and 7 at the Saipan Mayor’s Office Animal Shelter in Lower Base.

The June 6 meeting is at 4pm, while June 7 is at 10am.

The meeting will address issues such as learning to help the animal shelter, how to volunteer at the Saipan shelter, provide foster care to animals in need, help with events, support animal protection legislation, help get dogs off the chain, among others.

Jason Hudy, who volunteered during the two-week dog sterilization and adoption services by animal advocates and the Saipan Mayor’s office from May 19 to 29, said that members of the Humane Society are coming from Hawaii to help them set up programs.

“With all of the help we were able to spay/neuter close to 400 dogs, get almost 20 dogs adopted and two cats as well. It was a hugely successful two weeks, and if we all work together we can continue the momentum that was started to continue to make lives better for animals here on Saipan,” Hudy said.

“I’ve kind of ‘taken the lead’ in this whole process, along with two of our great volunteers over these past couple of weeks. So I’m in the process of coordinating exactly what will be happening at this meeting, setting up with the Mayor’s Office, the House of Representatives here on Saipan, the Dog Control Program here on Saipan, and the Humane Society group that will be joining us from Hawaii,” he added.

He also said that he had emailed information regarding the meeting to local volunteers during the program.

He noted that there are four areas that they wanted to target for the meeting: adoption, foster, the shelter, and outreach.

For adoption, Hudy said that the end result is to get the dogs out of the shelter including cats and kittens.

“We are going to be hitting this from several angles. We are going to have a section of the newspaper every week for featured animals. I’m trying to work on getting on TV once a week with the “Pet of the Week” or something like that. We are also seeing if we can do a mobile adoption, maybe taking animals to Street Market to make people aware. Any other ideas will be welcome as well,” he said.

For fostering, those willing to volunteer can foster an animal for a week or so, while the shelter will be having volunteers and donations over the course.

“We want to try and promote ‘Saipan Cares for Animals; Facebook page, get as many people to like that page as possible. Special events like having Animal Balance back hopefully later this year. Outreach like going into schools and educating adults and children about how to treat pets,” he said.