Talking with Stray Hearts’ new director

Stray Hearts, Taos’ local animal shelter, has hired a new director after the recent former director, Donna Karr, stepped down into a volunteer role. Liam Hughes, 50, will officially take over the position on June 6. The Taos News asked Hughes about his past experience and his hopes for Stray Hearts. for the State of Maine Department of Agriculture, which basically is regulating all the animal shelters, boarding kennels, breeding kennels [and] pet stores. It’s also investigating

Tell me a bit about yourself. What is your background?

Currently, I’m living in Maine. For the past 10-and-a-half years I’ve been director of animal welfare animal cruelty, doing the spay neuter program and licensing all the dogs in the state. It was basically a very high-level version of what happens throughout the entire state when it comes to animal shelter.

Before that, I was director of Animal Control in Washington, D.C., I was shelter manager in Cheyenne, Wyo., and also in New Jersey, where I started everything off 20 years ago as an animal control officer and shelter manager for small animal rescue.

It all started off with working with my father in the summers. He was a police officer, and every time an animal control officer would go on vacation, I go with my dad and we start working with local animal shelters, and that’s kind of where it all started for me.

When did you decide to take the position at Stray Hearts and why?

In my time here in Maine, I’ve done everything I could do. And you know, there’s a lot of changes going on here. So I’ve been looking for other opportunities where I can get back onto the front line, where I can start dealing directly with people and animals.

I was looking for a good opportunity where I could get into a shelter that had a good culture and has a lot of potential to work on being something bigger and better. When I met with the folks at Stray Hearts, I was very impressed by their dedication to the shelter and their mission and all saw a lot of