{"id":377103,"date":"2022-10-05T06:06:04","date_gmt":"2022-10-04T20:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=377103"},"modified":"2022-10-05T06:06:04","modified_gmt":"2022-10-04T20:06:04","slug":"boonie-babies-outlines-mission-to-rotarians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/boonie-babies-outlines-mission-to-rotarians\/","title":{"rendered":"Boonie Babies outlines mission to Rotarians"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sisters Grace, left, Aria Keilbach present their Boonie Babies Saipan organization during\u00a0the Rotary Club of Saipan meeting yesterday at the Giovanni\u2019s Restaurant of Hyatt Regency Saipan. (LEIGH GASES)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Boonie Babies Saipan\u2019s Grace and Aria Keilbach shed light into the boonie dog problem in the CNMI during\u00a0 yesterday\u2019s Rotary Club of Saipan meeting at the Hyatt Regency Saipan.<\/p>\n

The co-founders of the nonprofit organization spoke to the Rotarians for the first time and informed them the ins and outs of their organization, with their mission to rescue, educate, rehabilitate, and relocate boonie dogs in the forefront of their presentation.<\/p>\n

With the education and outreach aspect, Grace said, \u201cmost people are just not aware of pet care\u2013anything about dogs in general, medical care\u2013basically everything. And so we\u2019re starting from the very bottom with [the education] and that\u2019s how we really start building just how to make things better in general; you have to educate people on what is wrong in order to actually fix the problem. We do a lot of outreach with schools in the community, and basically just [try] to educate the younger generation, who will then grow up to fix the problem, hopefully.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grace continued \u201crescue is a huge mission of ours as well. We always have about 40 dogs circling through our house at any given time. That ranges from newborn puppies to older adult dogs that are still hanging out with us that we\u2019ve had for a few years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since their inception in 2018, they have rescued 300 stray dogs and cats from the streets of Saipan.<\/p>\n

She added that relocation is their next mission, in that the goal is to \u201crelocate these animals off the island. As of now we\u2019ve been able to get about five dogs to the states. We\u2019re really trying to get United [Airlines] to open that PetSafe travel program because our overall goal is to end the boonie dog population. Our statement is always hashtag \u2018save the boonies,\u2019 but we joke that it\u2019s like hashtag \u2018end the boonies,\u2019 because we don\u2019t want to see them anymore. So we\u2019re trying to solve the problem here, get them off the island, and really put a dent in the stray dog population; as well as create a new culture across [the] Marianas of what it means to have a pet. And, if you don\u2019t want a pet, what it means to show respect for animals\u2013 specifically to dogs and cats.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sisters then showed a viral video featured on The Dodo, a media company that shows animal-related videos online, which garnered millions of views on social media featuring Grace and Aria\u2019s first dog rescue, Honey, and showed the boonie dog problem around the island.<\/p>\n

According to the sisters, there are about 60,000 stray boonie dogs on the island\u2014even more than the current human population of Saipan. They presented a pyramid which shows the gestational period of a dog, which within one year, 16 dogs can be produced; within two years, 128 dogs will be birthed; in three years, 512 dogs; in four years, 2,048 dogs; five years, 12,288; and six years, 67,000 dogs.<\/p>\n

They did say that \u201cnot even a fraction of that is going to survive, but that\u2019s just the absolute crisis that we are dealing with here. Even if a fraction of 67,000, for every one in six years is surviving\u2014that\u2019s a lot. And cats can have even more. The gestation period of a cat is three months, two months. So cats are pregnant for two months before they give birth. That\u2019s a lot of kittens that can keep coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

They ended their presentation by saying that there are many ways to help their organization\u2014\u201cYou can donate, foster, volunteer, adopt, support\u2014follow us on social media, or borrow a boonie. There are so many things\u2014I know a lot of people come up to us and say no, I can\u2019t donate, I can\u2019t adopt. Well, that\u2019s okay, we have a long list of other things you can do as well. We are always looking for volunteers to come over and help us. We have a group that comes over on Sundays, taking dogs for walks, feeding, handing out treats, spending quality time with them\u2026 we also have fostering, which is just a step up from borrowing a boonie. But we do foster from any length. If you want to foster for a week or if you want to foster for three months\u2014we\u2019ll take the dog back at any time. We\u2019re trying to create pets\u2014we\u2019re trying to create well-rounded dogs that are adoptable and can live at home. So those actions of coming over and spending that one on one quality time with one of our dogs really makes the difference in their life and makes them more adoptable which can be the difference between life and death,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

At the end of their presentation, Rotary Club members presented them a certificate of appreciation as speakers in the meeting.<\/p>\n

For individuals interested in donating or learning more about their organization, look up Boonie Babies Saipan on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, or you can visit their website at booniebabiessaipan.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boonie Babies Saipan\u2019s Grace and Aria Keilbach shed light into the boonie dog problem in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":377104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-377103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}