I’m taking a break from my historical review to give a brief update about an aspect of modern life on the island. Supertyphoon Mawar is mostly through, and I am safely awaiting it at an apartment of a friend who is on the mainland for a few months. I relocated from my original place on the island because of many reasons, but the main one is that they informed me that they do not allow dogs. I mentioned during a night hike to one of my new friends that I was hoping to adopt a dog if the logistics work out, and he let me know that he was needing a place to keep the stray puppy he had found on the street while he is off-island. I’m not sure if he has a lot of experience with dogs. He said it was a 6 month old boy he had been calling “Bingo.” I showed up the next day and took possession of a 12-14 week old female puppy. I tried out names of places here - Rota, Marpi, Oleai - but settled on Tupu, “sugar cane” in Chamorro.
The apartment was run entirely by Chinese-speakers, so I was able to feign ignorance and sneak her in and out for a couple of weeks, but ultimately they got their only English-speaking employee to notify me that they would be charging me $50 a day for her. It wasn’t really worth arguing that there were other dogs at the spot, feral cats all around, and a full-blown rooster-and-goose operation constantly making noise nearby. Shortly before the typhoon rolled in, I brought her over to the apartment I’m subletting from my friend.
An early thing that you notice on island is that the number of stray dogs and cats are considerably higher than on the mainland. Local strays are known as ‘Boonie Dogs’ or ‘Boonies.’ The only places where I have seen a similar presence has been in poor, hot, foreign countries. There are no natural predators on the island, despite considerable jungle. Some of this proliferation is cultural - most dogs are chained up outside and are not spayed or neutered. This is a place where people take off their shoes before going inside (like in most of the world), so inside dogs don’t make much sense if the issue is cleanliness. Plus, huge percentages of the local population are from East and Southeast Asian countries. I don’t want to make offensive jokes about dog meat and Chinese people, but I do think that the way domesticated animals are treated is connected to a legacy of poverty. If you and your parents are within living memory of famine, your community is not likely to be opening up a bougie pet food store any time soon.1 Here, there isn’t even a full-time vet.
There is, however, a network of non-profits that try to care for the dogs on the island, from public information campaigns about spaying and neutering to free clinics.2
A non-profit called Saipan Cares for Animals runs a basic, volunteer clinic where I got deworming and some flea medication for Tupu, but it is very limited and has shut down on and off over recent years, sometimes without notice.
A newer organization, Saipan Humane Society, partners with the animal shelter run through the Mayor’s office and tries to fundraise and bring a vet to the island. Another is the Boonie Flight Project, which operates out of Guam but has partnership in Saipan with Boonie Babies. They have chartered ten flights with over 500 dogs off of Guam to the mainland to find homes for them. Most of the organizations I have seen are run by people who did not grow up on island.
As with many volunteer organizations, these seem to be dependent on people with time and energy. Wide-eyed newcomers are perfect for that. They are also susceptible to burnout. When they are gone, often the organization folds. The sisters that started Boonie Babies moved to the island when they were teenagers in 2018. As life continues, who knows if they will be able to pass it on.
It isn’t that the locals don’t love their dogs. They do. As you walk along beach road, you see them washing them in the lagoon, where -the theory is - the coral-rich seawater helps their coats and keeps away the pests.
There is no rabies on island, but getting the island certified as such seems unlikely. The World Organization of Animal Health, which sets out the guidelines for these things, do so by nation. Without a full-blown Saipan-specific protocol recognized by airlines and customs around the world separate from the USA, it would not really work. Plus, without a consistently working vet hospital, it would be hard to have the required records and surveillance to even apply.
Boonies are a jolly lot, without highways, predators, or dangerously cold or hot weather (barring the typhoon every few years). Each beach restaurant has a boonie that will show up around sunset to take pictures and be fed by the tourists. If you have to be a stray dog, this is a good place for it. There are roughly five types of boonies on island, so I have been seeing ones that look like Tupu’s possible sires or cousins all over. Tupu is the kind known as ‘sort of looks like some kind of Shepherd.’ She is not a swimmer or retriever, but does like herding people around. One thing she does like a cartoon dog, however, is bury bones. I am used to pets who inhale milkbones or rawhides as soon as you give them. Until I started finding them in my shoes or under my pillow, I didn’t realize what she was doing. On the beach, she hunts crabs snout first, tracking them under the surface of the sand and then diving in. When she comes up, she looks like Tony Montana.
People moving here used to ship their dogs here, especially before United changed the way it handled that service after high-profile instances of mishandling. Since that is the only airline that reaches out here, it has created one more barrier for people to come out here. Getting the dogs back from the island is even more rare. Since off-island people come and go on relatively short contracts, dogs are often passed along. If I am only a chapter in Tupu’s life, that will be fine.
Helping another living thing is the best thing to do to improve your mood and character. Traveling is a solitary experience. Some of the nature of my work here makes me even more isolated. I have to constantly watch my mood and, since I am extroverted and on the other side of the world from my fiancé, it can be tough. Adopting Tupu seemed like a quick-fix, an impulse I have written about before. Obviously, adding chores and errands in any way to my already busy schedule has had some downsides. But watching how frightened and confused Tupu was during the Supertyphoon—even when she was inside and dry with a small pack— gave me something to focus on and made all of the inconvenience worth it.
My neighborhood in Austin has three.
They also provide these services for cats, but feral cats are much harder to catch. Because of the songbirds, they are the bigger ecological problem, but there is no concerted effort here to deal with them.
Thanks for sharing! Tupu looks cute and I look forward to seeing her!
She is so sweet! I really hope you can take her with you when you leave.