By Tiffany Lee and Sara Tewksbury
A large rescue of 150 dogs from a South Korean meat farm is planned to arrive in Newark late April.
The dogs will be placed in Emergency Placement Partner shelters nationwide, including shelters in San Francisco and Newark as well as an emergency temporary shelter run by the Humane Society, Raul Arce-Contreras from the Human Society Organization said.
“Rescues from South Korea over the last few years have become more and more common,” Sean Casey, from Sean Casey Animal Rescue in Brooklyn, said . But Casey hasn’t rescued South Korean dogs from meat farms yet. “Sadly we get hit over, we have small shelter, we are very limited. I don’t have any Korean dogs,” he said.
Animal shelters on Long Island are overcrowded, Dori Scofield of Save-A-Pet Rescue said. Save-A-Pet Rescue was founded in 1994 in Port Jefferson by Scofield and has placed over 25,000 animals in homes. Some 50 of those rescued were from dog meat farms in South Korea and every single one has been adopted to a new family in the community.
Currently, Scofield said there is no plan to take dogs from that rescue but if the Humane Society and Animal House Project reached out to them, they would take in some.
Save-A-Pet has over 30,000 likes and over 400 reviews on its Facebook page. Out of the 400 reviews, they have a 4.8 out of 5 Facebook rating, and customers talk about how the shelter helped them find their pet.
“We pride ourselves in matching the right animal to the right families, its kind of like match.com for animals,” Dori Scofield said.
Greg Dski adopted a one-year-old cat named Caddy from Save-A-Pet in June of 2013. “I was at save a pet for almost an hour looking at all the cats and caddy just clicked.”
“They’re really nice and friendly and they offer everything for really cheap,” Kerry Ng, a visitor said. “They get all their supplies from the community so they rely on the community for most of the support.”
Now the shelter runs like any other business. “At the end of the day I know we saved lives,” Scofield said.
“It can be very emotional sometimes and painful because sometimes animals don’t make it and there are some sad stories but most of the time it’s very rewarding and fulfilling,” Susan Manolakis, an employee at Save-A-Pet said.
Shelters are not only trying to rescue the animals on Long Island but ones abroad as well.
“We have taken about 50 dogs from South Korea, and it’s a drop in the ocean but for those dogs, it means everything,” Scofield said.
