Providing basic veterinary services in American Samoa is extremely difficult. Coconut Mutts hopes to help with that. Without sufficient resources, the single, small veterinary clinic struggles to keep up with providing basic preventative and medical care to all animals on the island, including, but certainly not limited, to: dogs, cats, pigs, chickens and wildlife, such as turtles and fruit bats. The clinic has a lot on its plate: providing care to patients, reducing the large population of stray dogs and cats, assisting farmers with animal related issues, trapping and removing animals from public lands, addressing bite cases and providing adoption support.
The goal of Coconut Mutts is to provide enough resources to the clinic to strengthen and improve current operations and to also provide enough resources to create future programs, such as remote island clinics. Currently, our “mainland team” in Seattle works directly with the “island team” at the clinic in American Samoa. We coordinate directly with clinic staff and Dr. Kristen Jensen, to determine what resources they need and, just as crucial, get the resources directly to the clinic. Any donations made to Coconut Mutts is used to directly help the clinic.
Things taken for granted on the mainland, such as hot running water, vehicles that can climb hills and adequate sewage drainage, are what is needed most to improve animal welfare in American Samoa. With these additional resources, Coconut Mutts, in partnership with the clinic and its staff, hope to make life more bearable in an already remote and harsh corner of the US.
Learn more about our work:
Village Spay and Neuter Program
Coconut Mutts 