Combining Travel and Volunteer Work, My Third Trip to China

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I love to travel. I also love dogs. These are two things that aren’t often compatible with travel bloggers. If you have a dog, you’ll understand the headache of finding someone you trust to take care of your baby while you’re away from home. You’ll also understand the sadness of coming back to your temporary home in (fill in exotic locale here) and not being met with that happy puppy face. Sure, a vacation in the Maldives is nice, but you can’t tell me you don’t miss those sloppy doggo kisses.

One afternoon last December, I was scrolling through my Instagram feed of dogs, places I’d like to visit, fellow EDS girls, and a smattering of my favorite contestants from RuPaul’s Drag Race, when I came upon a post from Road Dogs & Rescue combining two of my greatest loves, dogs, and travel. The post was asking for flight volunteers to travel to northern China and return to Los Angeles with dogs saved from the dog meat trade. Having been to China several times before, I felt fairly confident in my ability to make the trip and return the lucky survivors to their new foster families here in the US. Unfortunately, I was scheduled for some surgery on the dates they wanted me to go. Damn my chronic illness!!!

Thinking I missed my one and only opportunity, I put it out of my mind. Until several weeks later when the Roadogs contacted me again asking if I could make a last-minute trip to Harbin, China to bring back another group of bulldogs. I was in! With my mouth still on fire from oral surgery, I packed my pain pills, mouth rinse, and some backup antibiotics in case things got really gnarly. (Spoiler alert, they got gnarly.)

My itinerary took me from Los Angeles to Taipei, Taiwan then on to Beijing, China, and finally to Harbin, China. Somewhere between Taiwan and Beijing, I noticed my jaw suddenly seemed to have its own heartbeat. My face was throbbing. One trip to the airplane bathroom and three dozen selfies pointed down the back of my throat later, I realized I had a dental abscess.

Realizing I also had a fever, I quickly pulled the antibiotics out of my carry-on and frantically emailed my oral surgeon asking if I would die in flight somewhere over the East China Sea. He told me to keep on the antibiotics and that I would “probably be fine.” But I wasn’t fine. In fact, the pain got worse throughout my trip. I guess the manual labor, temperatures well below zero, and jet lag weren’t really conducive to healing.

When I returned home, the surgeon would have to scrape out all of the cadaver bone he implanted in my jaw. My body was rejecting it. But I didn’t fly all that way to turn back around and come home. There were some adorable dogs counting on me! So I popped my medicine and soldiered on like the hot, yet dedicated, mess I am.

Onward I went to Harbin! If you’ve heard of Harbin it’s probably because of its famous Harbin Ice and Snow Festival, the largest of its kind in the world. It’s a pretty amazing display that becomes even more stunning at night when it’s fully illuminated. I saw it from the back seat of a taxi at the end of a long day of shoveling dog poop. But still, it was pretty damn impressive.

This trip wasn’t about sightseeing though. While China has many spectacular sights, sounds, and tastes, I was here to help feed, medicate and clean up after over one hundred dogs saved from the meat trade and currently being housed at a safe house. I’m sure most of you have heard of Yulin, the annual festival held in southern China, involving the torture and slaughter of dogs for their meat. What many people don’t realize is Yulin is responsible for a very tiny fraction of the dog meat consumed in China. Yulin shockingly accounts for less than one percent of the dogs slaughtered each year in China.

While there are definitely other countries around the world where dogs are eaten, China remains the world’s largest consumer of dog meat. Each year an estimated 10-20 million dogs are slaughtered for food. Breeds from golden retrievers to poodles to mix breed mutts are all are at risk of ending up in the meat trade. Some are pets stolen from their owners, some come from breeding farms where they aren’t vaccinated and are often riddled with disease. Others come from breeders who weren’t able to sell them as pets while they were still young puppies and thus sell them to the meat trade to try to recover some of their costs.

While the number of people eating dog meat is declining, it is still a widespread practice in much of mainland China. It’s not only heartbreaking and soul-crushing to see, but it’s incredibly dangerous to consume dog meat due to the lack of any regulations. The dogs are almost always unvaccinated. Unvaccinated dogs can carry rabies, distemper, and parvovirus, as well as scabies, mites, mange, worms, and a host of other infections. Some of these can make people quite sick or even cause death if ingested. Yet we passed more than a few restaurants in the villages where freshly slaughtered dogs hung outside.

Most of my time was spent volunteering at a safe house run by three women living abroad in China. These women are truly angels on earth for helping save thousands of lives, dedicating so much of their time and energy to these dogs, and surrounding themselves with suffering each and every day, all while living in a tremendously harsh environment, thousands of miles from their families. Each of the dogs in the safe house has first visited a clinic to deal with any major illness or communicable diseases. Once they are deemed healthy enough, each dog is placed in a kennel or crate, given food, water, medical attention, and regular playtime in the yard. Some are so abused and neglected they refuse to leave their crates, ignore their food, and cannot stand to be touched by humans. The girls and their volunteers from all over the world work tirelessly to help them learn to trust and love again. This is no small undertaking given the horrors many of them have seen.

During my stay, I was also able to visit a Chinese rescue. Despite the horrific hoarding-like conditions inside, this is one of the best hopes some of these dogs have at being saved. Not wanting to pay money to the meat dealers and support the dog meat trade, the girls from the safe house get many of their dogs from this Chinese rescue. The property is a sprawling estate encompassing several acres. Like a Chinese version of Grey Gardens, it has seen better days. Dogs roam around the property, both outside and inside. Broken down cars, urine and feces soaked mattresses, dirty blankets, and bowls full of cornmeal laid out as dog food were scattered all around. The owner, a tough-as-nails Chinese woman in her 50’s guided us from room to room while holding a bag of freshly cooked chicken parts. She would throw meat, skin, and feet to the dogs as we walked through looking for those who needed immediate medical attention.

I saw live dogs huddled together for warmth with dead dogs, dogs dying from flesh-eating bacteria, and dogs severely tortured and abused to the point of missing jaws, legs, tails, ears, and eyes. The owner of this property doesn’t believe in cages or kennels. This is a very nice idea in theory, but given the fact that many of these dogs are not vaccinated, disease can and does spread quickly. She is also vehemently opposed to euthanizing dogs due to religious reasons. While it’s easy to look at this situation and become filled with rage, it’s actually the best hope for saving these animals. Without her taking these dogs from the meat trucks, they would most certainly be killed. It’s a slow process, but the girls remove as many dogs as they can in hopes they can still be helped at the clinic and eventually make their way to the safe house and on to a forever home.

Once the dogs receive medical attention and make it to the safe house, rescues from all over the world partner with the women to help fly the dogs to their new forever homes. On this trip, four Frenchies and four English bulldogs accompanied me on their freedom flight to Los Angeles. We were met by a group of amazing fosters all looking to help get the pups to get started on their new American journey. I’m happy to report most of the dogs found their forever homes, including one little cream Frenchie named Goldie who now lives with my parents in New Jersey. She’s a very happy and very spoiled little girl. Only one of the Frenchies remains with her foster family, as she has some long-term medical issues that require ongoing physical therapy. But she is improving each day. (And luckily, after another surgery, so is my jaw.)

It’s estimated some 10-20 million dogs are killed for meat each year in China alone.

Please visit Slaughter House Survivors for more information and ways you can get involved in helping save dogs from the meat trade. Also, if you are traveling overseas, please google other organizations around the world looking for flight volunteers. The most common locations are places like Beijing, Shanghai, and Seoul, though there are organizations worldwide in search of volunteers. Becoming a flight volunteer will cost you nothing. You sign up, the dogs are checked into cargo, and the airline will help you bring them through customs on the other side to meet their fosters/ forever families. That’s it. You’re responsible for showing their rabies vaccination paperwork to the customs officials. Easy enough, and deeply rewarding. If you’re planning an international vacation, why not look into helping some dogs in need?

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