Three years ago, before he was my dog, Dude was saved from a life on the streets of Taipei and what would certainly have been a cruel death. According to the World Society for the Protection of Animals, Taiwan is the worst place in the world for stray animals, and there are over a million stray dogs.
When they are captured and taken to a public pound, the majority are euthanized, often in inhumane ways like drowning and electrocution. Chia-wen is on a one-woman mission to save the strays of Taipei from this fate, and my dog owes his life to her.
His first year is a mystery, but somehow this Beagle/Bassett mix ended up wandering the streets of the giant city solo. Students at a university found him on a bus and took him back to their dorm, but couldn’t take care of him for long. They saw a flier about dog rescue and called Chia-wen, the guardian angel of dogs unlucky enough to be strays in Taipei, who zoomed over on her scooter and picked Dude up from the students. She got him neutered, placed him in a kennel, and kept him there with her own money for almost a year, taking him out every weekend to try to get him adopted.
She finally accepted that, at fifty pounds, he was just too big for families in Taipei to consider taking home, so she decided to send him to the United States. She contacted Wonder Dog Rescue in San Francisco and found out they had room for him. Then she arranged with someone who was flying to the U.S. to check Dude in as baggage. Chia-wen has done this many times, sending dogs to the States and to Germany. She pays for the crates and any shipping charges, and arranges for the dogs to be picked up at the airport.
She knows she can only make a small difference, despite her valiant efforts, and that the only way to solve the larger problem is for Taiwan to implement a more aggressive spaying and neutering program (which she is helping to do on a grassroots level), but she does what she can. To date, she has found homes for over 300 dogs, all while keeping her day job. Plus, she has adopted four of them herself.
Once he got to Wonder Dog, Dude was quarantined until he was deemed healthy, then was placed at a foster home in Burlingame for about a month, until I saw a posting about him on Craigslist and brought him home with me. Now he lives a dog’s dream life, going out with me for long playgroups and acting as poster boy for the collars I make. ($1 of each sale of The Good Life collars goes to organizations like Wonder Dog and to support Chia-wen’s solo efforts.)
You can visit Wonder Dog Rescue and Chia-wen’s blog to see dogs available for adoption, to donate to their work, tovolunteer as a foster parent, or to check in a dog as baggage if you’re flying out of Taiwan.
(Warning: The pictures of strays on Chia-wen’s blog are sometimes very graphic in documenting the level of medical attention they need when she finds them. It could break your heart.)
Cassy Lee is a freelance writer in San Francisco who also has her own dog-walking business called The Good Life and makes collars with the same name. Dude enjoys this new life very much.
Hats off to Wonder Dog Rescue for its efforts to bring Taiwanese dogs to safety in the U.S. There are other local groups that do the same, including Smiley Dog Rescue and Rocket Dog Rescue, where Bay Woof’s publisher found her Taiwanese rescue pup, Stella. Remember that all rescue groups depend on donations and volunteers to stay in operation. Consult the list of Rescue Groups on page 21 and help out however you can. —ED.
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