A visit to the Cook Islands SPCA

With various SPCA organisations around the world looking out for the welfare of vulnerable animals, our SPCA Certified National Manager Dr. Kelly Drake took the opportunity to visit the Cook Islands SPCA on her recent holiday.

Read on to hear about the visit to the charity, their local team, and the donations Kelly was able to provide from some of our New Zealand Centres!

When my husband Andy and I decided to take a trip to Rarotonga, I already knew that I wanted to visit their SPCA and see if we could help somehow.

Before leaving, I had asked across SPCA New Zealand for donated bits and pieces, and many staff members kindly provided an array of items. The donations were all sent to the Māngere Centre (thank you to Centre Manager Graeme and Head Vet Nathan for your help with this!) and I collected these ahead of our journey.

We made it to Cook Islands SPCA. At the time, they were looking after 48 different dogs and puppies and told me they usually have even more.

We met their amazing team – Ana (their Centre Manager), Kura (Ana’s niece and one of their Shelter Assistants), and Jojo (their Op Shop Sales Assistant). Their Op Shop Shop is at the Punanga Nui Market in Avarua (Rarotonga’s main town), and open every Saturday morning. It’s a great area with excellent food, music and dancing!

I was really excited to take part in their Waggy Tales walking experience. This is a great initiative of Cook Islands SPCA, where you can make a booking to join their pack walk with their dogs for a $50 donation which goes straight back to the shelter.

The walk goes either up to a waterfall, through the bush, or down to the beach. Our walk went up to the waterfall, and it was such an amazing experience! The dogs all knew where they were going, and had so much fun on the trail and at the waterfall. They interacted a lot with the people we met along the way, so it was great for adoption interest too.

We were joined on the Waggy Tales walk by people from all over – we met a mum and her daughter all the way from Las Vegas, who had rescued their dog from the meat market in South Korea. They’d brought donations for the shelter too, including a dog shaver, which the team were over the moon with.

We walked them back to the Centre and helped feed the dogs breakfast too. It was wonderful to spend the time chatting with Ana and Kura to learn more about the animals, the shelter and what they do.

We were able to hand over all of the donated items I’d managed to bring with me from home. I’d been careful to get rid of the bulky packaging so we could pack as much as possible, and we still ended up with a heavy bag – with 24kg in donations!

This included wormers, collars, leads, flea collars and flea treatment, surgical gear (including gowns, needles and syringes), food and treats.

I also went to the Aitutaki Animal Rescue, which is a rescue for cats. I found out that many of the cats over there have flea allergies, and it’s hard (and extremely expensive) to get flea treatments – so I stocked up on that and took them as much as I could. I also brought them some treats, and cat milk and syringes.

A lady named Steph is the one who looks after animals all over the island of Aitutaki, along with her husband. There are no vets on the island, and Air Rarotonga fly vets free from the mainland to help out with things like desexing which is great. Steph helps coordinate this, and assists so many people on Aitutaki in caring for their animals.

We had both a relaxing and rewarding experience visiting these incredible places and people, and I hope I’m able to help them further in the future. They do amazing work, and we were able to bond over our shared love of animals.

I highly recommend anyone who’s planning on visiting the Cook Islands to visit them – what better way to spend an island holiday!