Dear Friends
It’s been a while since I was able to do a personal update, but I hope you have been following our journey to Yulin on social media. If you have, you will know we succeeded against the odds to rescue 17 dogs - including one brave mother from a dog farm who gave birth just hours after I carried her from that evil place and a second mum with 3 puppies.
We know it’s hard to watch the ongoing cruelty the dogs and cats face, and for us, our very small team in China, it’s physically and mentally exhausting. This year, we were also in real danger. Our car had its tyres slashed in broad daylight the first day of the festival, and I was confronted late at night by security at the place I was staying and forced to flee. We spent many hours, well actually days, sleeping in the car with some of the rescues, and the journey back to the base was a long 46 hours.
I have been personally rescuing dogs and cats with Mr Zhao for over twelve years, as well as documenting the horror. This year we had more tangible proof that China has multiple dog farms in Guangxi, where they are breeding dogs as livestock, which should be forbidden. That’s a reason we were in so much danger. You are not allowed to bring live indigenous Yulin dogs out of the province of Guangxi because we now have the proof of what they are doing on a pretty large scale, and since our poor pups are all hospitalised with multiple infectious diseases they carry.
I haven’t updated you till now because there are some things we cannot talk about. Things we can’t even mentally process. The sadness of the pleading eyes, the dogs chained by their necks in tight cages, the screams we hear at the back street slaughterhouses, the smell of rotting flesh, the hatred and blank stares of those who care nothing for the innocent, the feeling of constant fear. And lots more.
So we have been back working hard at the base, which is still in a massive state of disrepair. Just a few of us to care for the 700 dogs and cats.
One of the key things about rescue that many people forget when they ask us to save as many as we can is what we can do with them once saved. Veterinary bills for dogs with distemper and other coronaviruses, as well as respiratory illnesses, can run into the thousands and require months of treatment and quarantine. And then we have to build new kennels each time, even after discharge, to keep the other dogs we have safe.
More and more hospitals won’t take in our dogs, and right now it takes us about 6 hours to drive to visit them all each day. We have thought long and hard about what to do and decided to build a dedicated isolation unit. We will place it at the back of the base where we have acquired some land and connected water and power. Then we plan to place two large container houses on the spot and kit them out to receive not just Yulin dogs but also our other lovely animals if they have open wounds or are recovering from surgery. Being in the middle of the countryside with regular floods and other climate challenges, we have to keep our sick and vulnerable as clean as possible. It's more work, but our dedication to them can’t end.
So that’s the news and some things I want to achieve before, finally, after months away, I fly back to Europe with some lucky rescues who have found homes.
We have a wonderful new blog writer now, and if you check out www.notodogmeat.blog, you can read uplifting stories about our dogs and cats and learn more about how to adopt.
I want to personally thank everyone on behalf of Mr Zhao and our team for all your kind words and your generous donations, which are a real lifeline to us.
We promise never to give up until the cruelty ends, and we welcome new volunteers and friends to our cause.
Julia de Cadenet
Founder NoToDogMeat
For everyone who has donated to our official fundraiser, we are truly grateful. If you can help more, we can fund our new isolation unit
Aside from donating, you can help us by buying a shirt and wearing it. We can also send you flyers to hand out.
thank you everyone
all photos and videos taken by Julia de Cadenet and the China Team
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