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Animal rescuers call for help to save strays
2020-12-02 
A couple poses for a photo with rescue dogs from Lost Puppies of Beijing at a fundraiser during the summer. CHRISTINE LOW/CHINA DAILY

With more cats and dogs being abandoned, shelters are coming under growing pressure. Christine Low reports.

On a sunny Monday afternoon in the suburbs of Beijing, barking dogs could be clearly heard at a nondescript house on an otherwise quiet road.

Inside, in a large room filled with donated furniture, Liu Yanli and her employee brought in a large puppy with shaggy white-and-grey fur. After letting the lively puppy run around the room, the employee placed it on a table and Liu whipped out her camera to take profile photos.

Once that was done, the employee held the puppy on the ground while Liu quickly administered a needle jab into its back. The process was repeated when the next dog was brought into the room.

"I've got a busy day ahead of me," said Liu as she repositioned the camera. "I need to finish taking all these photos for the agencies and administer the vaccinations so that they can be ready for adoption."

Liu is the founder of Together for Animals in China, a dog shelter that she set up in 2009 after almost a decade of volunteer animal rescue work.

Over the years, she has rescued and helped re-home hundreds of abandoned dogs. However, the situation at her dog shelter, along with countless other animal shelters across China, illustrates another side of the country's booming pet economy that is rarely talked about.

At odds

In recent years, China's pet economy has grown exponentially, with the market expected to exceed 296 billion yuan ($43 billion) this year, up from 221 billion yuan last year, according to market consultancy iMedia Research. In March, pet sales were almost 1.5 times higher than during the same month last year.

What's striking for rescuers is that more pedigree breeds are being abandoned, reflecting a growing demand for "prestigious" pets. Of the 200 dogs roaming TAC's courtyard, about 13 are golden retrievers, which is a much-prized breed.

Currently, there are no regulations controlling what dog breeds can be brought into China, so breeders import those that are in strong demand. However, this is sometimes at odds with municipal regulations as to what types of dogs people can keep at home. For instance, in certain districts of Beijing and Shanghai large dogs are prohibited.

"A lot of people ask me, 'Why do you have so many pedigree dogs in your shelter?'" Liu said. "That is because there is no formal control over dog breeders and what types of dogs they are able to sell."

Ekaterini Alexiadou, one of the founders of Shanghai Animal Rescue, said while large dogs such as Alaskan malamutes and German shepherds are seen as a sign of prestige in China, these dogs are not permitted in the Shanghai metropolitan area due to their size. "These animals are then quickly put on the streets," Alexiadou said. "This is reflected in the fact that over half of our rescues are purebred dogs."

Mary Peng, founder and CEO of the International Center for Veterinary Services in Beijing, said many new owners don't realize what is involved in looking after a pet, especially when it starts to grow.

"It starts chewing on everything and it's not trained because people don't have any knowledge or experience and don't know how to train them, and the family can't cope.

"Sometimes, people fall in love with a certain breed and they don't realize that this breed might not be appropriate for their house or their lifestyle," she said.

Adrien Macera, owner of the dog training and boarding center Diddy's Hood in Beijing, said owners often don't consider the physical needs of the pet.

"Often, they will have a beautiful dog that needs to run 20 kilometers a day, which they cannot make happen, and then the dog develops some serious problems," Macera said.

Animals purchased from pet stores might also have a variety of undisclosed and unknown medical problems that require costly treatment.

Alexandra Cukor, founder of the dog rescue network Lost Puppies of Beijing, said buyers can incur high medical costs, such as vaccinations, when they get their pet home. This is often because the dogs are from puppy mills where the mother has not received proper nutrition, or genetic defects are passed on in the animals.

"As a result, people are actually buying dogs that require very costly medical work for the rest of their lives because there are genetic defects," Cukor said.

A volunteer plays with a dog through a fence at Shanghai Animal Rescue in May. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Rescuer woes

In November 2018, Nid Nair and a fellow animal rescuer received a call for help to take in stray and abandoned dogs in Shanghai. Knowing that dog shelters are scarce and many at overcapacity, the duo rushed to offer assistance. After that, Nair's phone rang constantly as people learned of his rescue work. This soon led to the formation of Eleventh Hour Rescues Shanghai.

"We call ourselves Eleventh Hour Rescues because in many cases, we get called at the eleventh hour to save an innocent dog's life," said the sales manager from India.

"Since we are only a small group, it often means that by the time someone requests our help, we are their last lifeline."

Though the main focus of the group is dog rescues, they have also saved cats, rabbits, pigs and other animals.

Unlike other countries, China only has an informal network of limited animal rescue centers that are not easily accessible to the public.

"Many people have this preconceived idea that all rescuers have a shelter that can magically house an unlimited number of dogs," Nair said.

Not only is the number of shelters limited, but most rescuers in Shanghai foster the animals until the pets find a permanent home.

"There's a misunderstanding that when a dog is rescued from the street, the problem is resolved. In fact, getting a dog off the street is only the beginning of the journey," Nair said.

The absence of animal welfare organizations means that the bulk of medical and other associated costs fall on the rescuers, who often need to conduct fundraisers to pay the medical bills of the rescued animals.

But the fundraising efforts can be misconstrued, and rescuers have faced criticism and rebukes from netizens. Some are accused of being scammers, despite images of medical bills being shown on fundraising posters.

Once, Liu uploaded short videos of disabled dogs at her home on her Tik-Tok short-video account, and one netizen criticized her for exploiting disabled dogs to do promotions and "attract fans".

Liu said she was angered by the comments and made another video in response, which expressed her incredulousness over the attack.

"I rescued all these dogs, how can I do this for my own benefit?" recounted Liu.

But after posting the second video the criticism continued, and Liu took it down on the advice of another volunteer.

"It's really not easy at all," Liu said. "Actually, I feel very wronged. I have unconditionally looked after these disabled dogs for six years at home, so what's wrong with that?"

Abandoned, abused

In Ningbo, Zhejiang province, Monica Hsu encounters cases far worse than just abandonment. Hsu, who is from Taiwan and works for a trading company, is the founder of the cat rescue center Yixiu, or "One night". Every year, Yixiu rescues 20 to 30 cats that have been badly abused, and about 10 of them have to be euthanized.

"We only have the ability to rescue so many. Otherwise, we would see more than 100 such cases," Hsu said. "But we don't have the financial capability to do that."

Some of Yixiu's most serious cases included a cat blinded in one eye due to children throwing stones at it, and another in shocking condition with its paws missing and its lower legs mutilated, with the bones exposed.

"Only rescuers see this side. Adopters are not exposed to all these problems," Hsu said.

Shelters, and even businesses like Diddy's Hood, are not eager to publicly disclose their locations as they discourage pets being abandoned on their doorsteps.

Macera once found some puppies dropped off outside his center. "Any time that you are a dog establishment, no matter what you do, people feel that whatever dogs they give you, you will keep," Macera said.

Wang Ranran, a financial company executive who started a dog shelter on the outskirts of Beijing in late 2017, said that the depressed economy in the past few years meant many people were unwilling to pay for their canine's medical treatment.

"An animal hospital we work with would call us and say that the owners had abandoned their dogs at the hospital as they didn't want to pay the medical bills," she said.

"After treating the dogs for free, the hospital would give the dogs to us, saying that they felt relieved giving the dogs to us."

A cat has its claws trimmed at Yixiu, a rescue center in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, in August. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Epidemic problems

When Peng first heard news of the novel coronavirus outbreak, she quickly felt a sense of deja vu.

"I lived through SARS, so this felt all too familiar," Peng said, adding that the pet abandonment problem during the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak was also seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In May and June, Yixiu rescued about 30 cats of various breeds including 20 British and exotic short-hairs in Ningbo. "We constantly received calls for help for pedigree cats being abandoned on the streets. It's heartbreaking," Hsu said.

Many people in Ningbo left their pets alone at home for days on end during the pandemic, as they did not know how to cope with the situation.

"Leaving a pet at home alone for more than 24 hours is very dangerous, as many accidents can happen," Hsu said.

"During the quarantine period, we found many cats alone with no food and water. If the owner had had a cat sitter, we could have rescued the cat easily with the key."

Shelters and rescue networks also worked hard to rescue many animals abandoned on the streets.

Cukor, from Lost Puppies, said, "We did see during the coronavirus outbreak a very clear spike in abandonments, and we also found dogs abandoned on the streets."

She said her network of volunteers was very busy for about a month and a half, and they had about 40 dogs in their care at one point.

For Eleventh Hour Rescues, travel restrictions and flight cancellations delayed plans to re-home many of the dogs that were supposed to be adopted abroad.

"We are a foster-based rescue, we don't have a shelter and heavily rely on our network of fosterers," Nair said. "We ended up having to scrape every penny of our own personal funds to board them at the few available vets and dog hotels across the city."

Wang never thought that her shelter would rescue 127 dogs within a span of three months.

"There was a lack of accurate information being passed around about the virus, but there are currently no reports that cats and dogs transmit the virus," Wang said.

"Also, a lot of pet owners were unable to continue raising their pets or return to Beijing and this eventually led to their abandonment."

A vet examines a dog at the International Center for Veterinary Services in Beijing in February. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Hopeful future?

Wang said one way to reduce the number of abandoned animals is to have people sign purchase agreements at pet stores to ensure that they do not abandon their pets.

"Pets are not goods. It's not like buying a pair of shoes and throwing them away if they are old or you don't like them," Wang said. "It is a life, and they are family."

Hsu said that there are too many stray cats on the streets, and the government could support trap-neuter-return programs to control the population and help regulate the cat trade.

"This is especially so at animal hospitals," Hsu said. "They truly believe that selling cats will help them earn money."

Spaying and neutering dogs would also help control the abandonment problem, as a bitch can have a litter of up to 12 puppies. Cukor said the number of dogs they need to find homes for can get out of control "very quickly".

She also urged people to find a new home for their pets if they are unable to keep them. In May, Lost Puppies volunteers rescued five 3-day-old puppies from a garbage can.

"Please do not put your pet on the street or in a garbage can," Cukor said. "Surprisingly enough, we have had quite a few rescues where we have literally pulled dogs and puppies-sometimes only a couple days old-out of garbage cans.

"If people do need to give up their pets, try and find a vet, or a shelter, or a friend, anybody who can take that dog on-instead of doing that."

Liu said she would continue her volunteer work at the shelter even though she has turned 50, the age at which many women retire.

"I have done this for 20 years," Liu said. "I cannot just give up like that, and will continue doing this."

She said even though the conditions at her shelter were good for the animals, she hopes it's just a "pit stop" for them.

"They should go to good homes. Every dog wants to go to a good home, and not grow up in a shelter," Liu said.

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