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September 16, 2015

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Home » Metro » Society

Woman seeks home for dogs as her shelter faces demolition

By Chen Huizhi | September 16, 2015, Wednesday | Print Edition

ANNA Xu is having a hard time finding people, or even shelters, for her dogs, most of them picked up from the streets and looked after by her for years.

Her sprawling shelter for dogs on a rented premises on Qingkun Road in Qingpu District is marked for demolition at the end of this month.

Xu has been devotedly looking after the dogs — investing her time and energy — for the last six years. “My heart aches to see them suffer. I only hope my dogs will find compassionate adopters,” Xu told Shanghai Daily yesterday.

The city has an abundance of dogs but very few dog shelters due to lack of funds and available places.

Xu spends all her money and resources on the shelter, which she has tirelessly built on a plot of land she rented from a holiday resort. She has used the social media to hunt for dog lovers but she could only find homes for 20 dogs from the 60 or 70-odd canines.

“Young puppies and dogs of particular breeds are preferred,” Xu said.

At the other end of the city is Aunt Wu’s cat-and-dog shelter in Baoshan District. The shelter, a two-story rural residential house, is home to over 80 cats and over 60 dogs.

A volunteer who helps out Wu during her spare time said the city has come a long way from shunning common Chinese rural dogs and adopting them, thanks to animal care organizations.

“The problem is, those who have never kept dogs have no experience in taming stray dogs, and many shelters don’t have the resources to train them before they are adopted,” the volunteer, surnamed Song, told Shanghai Daily.

Xu has two hired hands to look after the dogs during weekdays. One of them is a retired army man whose job is to train the dogs.

“I’ve been trying my best to give the dogs some sort of dignity,” she said.

Wu believes it is a matter of time before her shelter for the dogs is also demolished.

“There are fewer and fewer ideal dog shelters in Shanghai because rents are going up and property developers are scooping up all the available land they think are not too far away from the city center,” Song said.

Shanghai Public Security Bureau runs a dog shelter in Zhabei District. Dogs that are not adopted after 30 days can be put to death according to the city’s law on dog management, but in actual practice this happens rarely because it is a huge facility, bureau officials said.

Xu has taken all the precautions, getting all the dogs — stray dogs or abandoned — vaccinated and sterilized. Meanwhile, her hunt for genuine dog lovers continues unabated.

Society


 

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