Juneau Animal Rescue plans to celebrate 60th anniversary with 'Paws for Applause'

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Saturday, March 4th, 2023 11:39am

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Pudge is a 12 year old kitty looking for a good home. He does okay with other cats and likes lots of gentle loving. (Photo courtesy of JAR)

Juneau, Alaska (KINY) - Samantha Blankenship, Executive Director of Juneau Animal Rescue, talked with Dano on Capital Chat about JAR celebrating 60 years.

The gala will be on Apr. 1 from 6 pm to 9:30 pm at the Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall.

"We're going to celebrate our 60 years of serving animals in need and talk about a little bit of the history of the past 60 years and what we might have planned for the next 60 years. We have tickets on sale on our website," she said. "We have a full-course buffet by V's Cellar Door which will be awesome. That includes appetizers and desserts, and we have music by Fleet Street. We'll have a dance floor. Dancing is optional. We'll have a cash bar and we're just going to come out and celebrate all of the work that we've done."

All of the proceeds benefit the animals.

To attend the gala, someone must be 21 years of age or older.

Tickets are $100 each, or someone could reserve a table for eight for $1,000.

Blankenship gave an update on the animals.

"This is my 14th year. I have seen more animals come in there last year than I have in my entire time there. Experts are saying that they speculate that 3 million animals did not get fixed during the pandemic," she said. "So shelters nationwide are seeing an explosion of intakes to their shelters. There's also a veterinary shortage nationwide, as Juneau is well aware of."

She said part of the increase of animals coming in is a lack of socialization over the pandemic or people going back to work are no longer able to take care of their pets.

Over the increase of animals coming in, Blankenship said the community has been helpful in fostering pets or getting the word out to adopt.

JAR has a list of vets on its resources page.

Blankenship talked about some of the resources they provide.

"Spaying and neutering services are open to the public. There are also low-cost options for people that maybe are a lower income bracket. You can find that information on our website as well. We can usually get people in within a couple of weeks," she said. "We have a vaccine clinic every Tuesday, it's by appointment. We do all core vaccines for animals and we also can do dewormer and flea prevention. We also are doing health certificates too."

Currently, JAR has a mix of cats of all different ages, dogs, a turtle, and a guinea pig up for adoption.

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