The Hawaiian Humane Society will once again be operating pet sterilization efforts on Oahu.

Under the Humane Society’s care, the city’s Neuter Now program allowed customers to pick and choose their veterinarian with a program of 18 clinics and 40 veterinarians island-wide. Earlier this year the Animal Care Foundation held the city contract with one clinic.
High demand forced Animal Care to put patients on a waiting list, but Animal Care Vice President Frank De Giacomo maintains that the list “wasn’t anything that couldn’t be handled in a weekend of neutering.”
Animal Care lost the contract on April 7, which it held from Feb. 2, after an “inability to fulfill contract requirements,” said Dennis Kamimura, licensing agent with the city Department of Customer Services. One of those requirements, the mobile clinic, didn’t mature in time to meet the contract requirements.
The mobile clinic was meant to serve under-represented areas of the island: beaches, homeless populations and people unable to commute. The City Council also wanted the clinic to provide a list of outside veterinarians to send patients, a request that the foundation was unwilling to abide to.
“They (City Council members) were asking for something we weren’t willing to provide them,” De Giacomo said. “They wanted names of veterinarians – we were focused on a mobile unit.”
As a result the county canceled the contract and moved the program to the Humane Society, the second bidder who also nurtured the program for 23 years prior.
“The real champions of (our) program are the veterinarians,” said Pam Burns, CEO of the Hawaii Humane Society. “They are offering highly skilled services at greatly reduced prices.”
“This is an essential program that reduces our island pet population and provides reasonable cost options for this valuable service,” said Mayor Mufi Hannemann.
Sterilization certificates for the program range in price from $20 for families on government assistance (EBT card holders) to $75 for a female dog and can be picked up at any Satellite City Hall or Hawaiian Humane Society location.