Yulin 2016

Our visit to Yulin this year, as in previous years, requires your help.
 Animals rescued from the dog or cat meat trade are usually very sick with illness and disease and are severely dehydrated.
​Please help us to help them by donating to rescue animals and then treat them with essential medical treatments.
Thank you for your support.

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18 June.
We are leaving to go to Yulin tomorrow morning and that requires lots of planning and organising and making room for sick dogs, who will be rescued from the Yulin Dog Meat Lychee Festival. Dogs who are rescued by us during the year are taken to the highrise block where Du lives and where our old shelter used to be situated. Being in the highrise means Du can nurse sick dogs back to health easily. Among the dogs well enough to be moved to the new shelter base are Tiě Dàn, the black Labrador left tied to the stair rails of Du's house, and Alaska the Alaskan Malamute who was found very sick under a bridge next to the river. We have a great relationship with our local Guangyuan government who help us when we close down slaughterhouses and restaurants serving dog meat so we would like to say thanks to the Urban Management Bureau in Guangyuan city for helping us by supplying vehicles to move our dogs!
Help us to rescue dogs from Yulin by donating.
Thank you for your support.
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Our visit to Yulin Dog Meat Festival 2016 is only a few hours away. Our founder Du Yufeng and volunteers have made their way from Guangyuan to Chengdu with the intention of dropping off some of the sick dogs who need treatment, including one dog who has a big tumour on his nose, at Huai Ren Pet Hospital. They have also taken some adorable orphan puppies who are needing around the clock care and frequent feeding. Veterinary nurses at the Pet Hospital will take care of these babies until the Yulin visit is over. From Chengu, Du and our volunteers will take a flight to Nanning and from there they will travel to Yulin. We still need your help to save animals at Yulin and then give them medical treatment afterwards. 

After Du had left Yulin, she received bad news about the dog shown in the video below with the tumour in his nose. You can see the update here.

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19 June.
​Our founder Du Yufeng and our team are boarding the plane at Chengdu airport, ready to fly to Nanning airport in Guangxi on their scheduled flight leaving Chengdu at 06:50. The time to face the hell on earth that is Yulin Dog Meat Lychee Festival is getting closer.

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When our flight from Chengdu in our native Sichuan Province touched down in Nanning, Guangxi Province, the start of our journey truly began. We bought tickets at the office to catch a bus from Nanning Airport in to Nanning town.

Tonight our founder Du Yufeng met with Marc Ching of Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation to discuss how she and our team can help him to rescue dogs. Things need to be thought out and decided but for now, it is late in Yulin so rest is needed by all to face the horrors tomorrow that all activists face when confronting dog and cat slaughter.
Goodnight for now.
You can donate to help us rescue animals from this year's Yulin festival via the Donate button at the top of the blog.
Thank you for your support.

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20 June.
​At the entrance to Yulin's Dong Market there are cages full of dogs and cats awaiting their death, watching cage mates murdered in front of them, their cries are heartbreaking, the bloody scenes upsetting. The killings have already started. Obviously not wanting the world to see, one of the dealers came out of his stall and threatened our volunteer, Yang Dong, with a machete! Yang quickly ran out of the dealer's way. He escaped unhurt, but this is what we are up against from people who think their 'traditional culture' must be preserved. NO! This is NOT Chinese culture!

There are many purebreed dogs for sale in the markets. The vendor to whom these 2 Miniature Poodles belonged bragged to our founder Du Yufeng "Customers love to eat purebreed dogs. One customer bought 2 purebreed dogs this morning and killed them with a stick with just one hit each".

These 2 dogs are lucky. They are now safe but they are also sick. One of them has a big lump in it's throat but they are both being treated at a pet hospital. 

​Tomorrow is the Summer Solstice.
Tomorrow, the festival at Yulin really begins...

Rescuing dogs or cats from the meat trade is very emotional at the best of times but for us, sometimes it seems impossible. Of course, the actual rescuing is the easy part but it doesn't stop there. The dogs and cats are often full of diseases like Rabies or Canine/Feline Distemper, caught from others in such a close proximity. They are transported often for days in these conditions with no food or water. They often have broken limbs or tails from careless throwing of the cages in which they are packed so tightly in that they cannot even move. Thrown to the ground from trucks with no regard for their lives. This is when the reality of the situation begins to sink in. Do we have the space for the rescued animals but more importantly, once they are nursed back to health, do we have the financial means to look after them until they are adopted. Most we rescue are never adopted. We are a small organisation in a small city in Sichuan. We cry when we return back to our hotel rooms, remembering what we have seen and heard, toiling with the sense of responsibility that we have to those animals. We will do the best we can with what we have but ultimately we cannot rescue them all. We hope you will still support us like you are doing already. We hope we can meet your expectations but more importantly,
we hope we can meet the eyes of the animals if we are forced to walk away.
Now, we must sleep. Tomorrow is the start of the madness and sadism that we have seen all too often at Yulin's dog meat lychee festival. 
This is why we fight to end the dog and cat meat trade.

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21 June.
Day of the Summer Solstice.
Yesterday our founder Du Yufeng and some of our volunteers were followed, in Yulin, wherever they went. A dozen or so police deliberately set out to delay them, trying to intercept them, afraid of their actions.
Today, at approx 3am, Du received a visit by 3 policemen at her hotel room. She and another activist, whom she is sharing a room with, were questioned. The police did not leave the hotel during the night. They are obviously afraid of us shooting the bloody scenes of slaughter of dogs and cats.

At dawn, Du and our volunteers managed to leave the hotel to have breakfast before heading to the market. There, they were confronted by hundreds of dog meat eaters who harassed and tried to intimidate them. They even saw the thugs who robbed Du of her money last year.
​Things are very tense at Yulin now.
Du and our volunteer, Yang are well known by some officials in Yulin so they must tread carefully.

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The harassment towards our founder Du Yufeng and our team continued when this bunch of dog dealers confronted them. They told Du, "The Yulin Dong Farmer's Market is a private space and outsiders, including any reporters are not allowed to go in". The arrogant thugs then said: "If you go any further you will be met with hands-on resistance"
Did Du take any notice? No! These cocky men are obviously threatened by our presence in Yulin and so are resorting to threats. The duo has never let any dog dealer or eater win and these are no different.
They know her face very well after her previous visits to Yulin so they should also know very well that she will never back down! They and their opinions, threats and harassment are of no importance to any of us. We are there for the animals not to pander to their egos!

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Before traveling to Yulin, our volunteer Yang Dong, in the bottom photo pictured far right, contacted a lawyer for guidance on permanently closing down slaughterhouses and restaurants who operate in Yulin. The lawyer and his team arranged to meet Yang and our founder Du Yufeng at the hotel in which they are staying.
The killing of dogs and cats happens all year round, not just during the Summer Solstice festival. Back in Guangyuan we do this as a matter of course because only with the backing of the law and officials can these hellholes be closed down for good. If they can't show the officials the relevant paperwork to kill and cook dog meat then they are closed down.
​Remember, dog meat is illegal. It does not pass China's food safety law requirements.
We know that some officials like to eat dog meat and a blind eye is turned and money changes hands so that the slaughterhouses and restaurants can carry on trading.
We do not live in Yulin so that makes it even harder to do things the correct way.
When the morning comes we will present our case to the Yulin City Food and Drug Administration office but if it is rejected, at least we will know that we tried.
The dog and cat meat mafia can NOT keep getting away with the corruption, harrassment, real threats of violence and actual violence towards activists and animal lovers who want the innocent lives saved and protected.

BAN DOG AND CAT MEAT TRADE FOREVER!!

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22 June.
​The deputy director of Yulin Food and Drug Administration and two chiefs met with us today for the negotiations to close down the slaughterhouses permanently.
The secretary tried to tell us that dog (& cat) has no specific quarantine rules so they (live and dead) can be available for sale on the market but we countered this claim with the fact that the food safety law makes it clear that if there are no quarantine and vaccination certificates available for each of the animals, then they cannot be transported anywhere.
The Yulin government makes a lot of profit from the selling of dogs and dog meat (& more recently, cat). They have a vested interest in this trade and will do all they can to protect it. To protect the dog and cat meat mafia.
HOW can people of the law PROTECT this illegal activity? The corrupt officials are obviously on the payroll of the dog traders and butchers. We have to try and expose this corruption. We have to try to use every power we have within law to try and close these hellholes down permanently.
If we fail, we know that we tried....
for the animals.

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23 June.
Our Yulin 2016 visit has come to an end.
Our founder Du Yufeng and our team are now in Nanning treating the sick animals rescued and then will take them home.

The violence this year has been the worst that Du has experienced. The taunting and harassment can be accepted but the physical and very violent death threats and abuse can not. Grown men hit, pushed and threw things at Du. Our 22 year old volunteer Yang Dong was chased down the road by a butcher waving a machete. Yang was called a coward by some who commented on our photos. We would rather him run away than end up in hospital with serious injuries...or worse!

Du did save some animals but this wasn't the happy ending we hoped for either. Having made an agreement with a dog dealer, the dogs had been taken out of the filthy, rusty cages. Leashes were placed around the dogs' necks so that Du could walk them away from the scene. When Du handed over the money* to the dealer, a crowd of dog meat thugs quickly surrounded her and the rest of the team. Du and the others tried to find a way to push through the crowd, but these disgusting men would not let them leave. Things happened so quickly that no one could stop it. A commotion started and some of the men roughly grabbed hold of the dogs and pushed through the crowd, running off. With 4 of our dogs. The crowd cheered and let them through then packed in tighter so that none of our team could run after the thieves. We had managed to save some dogs from the most horrific death and then 4 of them were gone. Back to the hellhole they had just been saved from.
Du is absolutely devastated beyond belief.
Every year that she goes to Yulin, the more Du is taunted and harrassed from being recognised. The officials and police have always made a point of watching her wherever she went but this year they never left her alone. Tailing her in plain clothes, police would follow her every move, even going to her hotel room at 3am to question her and look at the photos on her phone.
Some were deleted.
We know that the corruption in the dog meat trade runs deep but Yulin is second to none. Money is the root of all evil. Very true in Yulin where dog dealers, butchers and restaurant owners give payouts to these corrupt officials. The whole festival should not exist if we look at the law but it does exist and is thriving. They know they are safe. They pay good money to have this protection.

The animals we saved will need love and rehabilitation to help them overcome what they have seen and heard. Long term support from your donations will help them until they are adopted- IF they are adopted.... We know from past experience that rescuing is the easy part. If we look at an average of 8 years for a dog's life span, caring for these damaged souls will take a lot of money, especially if they live the rest of their lives in the shelter.

We have not been a part of any other group's rescue.
Du and our team worked on their own.
Du apologizes for letting you all down, for not rescuing more animals but her own and the safety of our team was paramount and she could not risk staying there any longer.
We will update you about the rescued animals tomorrow once we have all rested.
Thank you for your support throughout all of this very difficult time.
If anyone wishes their donations to be refunded,  please contact us.

*We know it is an emotive issue to buy dogs and cats and we know that the money given to the dealers enables them to buy more. We always try to rescue the animals with the help of the law. In other cities, the law would be sufficient to confiscate the animals but as you have learned, Yulin is a lawless city where the killing and consumption of dogs and cats is protected by the very people who could save them.

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24 June.
​It is difficult knowing that hundreds of dogs are left behind in Yulin but our founder Du Yufeng has hired a truck to take the dogs that she rescued from Yulin to Nanning where they will be nursed back to full health.
Once they are well enough to fly back to Guangyuan, we will start to help them to recover from their ordeal. We see dogs being dragged to slaughter, wagging their tails. Dogs want to be our friends! Although Du has bought these dogs from traders in Yulin, she appreciates that saving dogs in this way will not end the dog or cat meat trade.  It is a heartbreaking situation where sometimes the only way to save the dogs is to buy them. Whenever possible, Du works with the local police and authorities to close down slaughterhouses, butchers and restaurants and save the dogs & cats this way but as we stated previously, Yulin is full of corruption.  
Above all, apart from long overdue laws being implemented, education is the only way that the dog & cat meat trade will end and this is why Du and our volunteers perform education events to tell people about the cruelty involved ithen killing the dogs & cats and also the risk to eater's health. See more on our website boaianimalcentre.weebly.com
Approx 10,000 dogs are slaughtered every year at Yulin Dog Meat Festival. Hundreds of thousands more will be   in some parts of China throughout the year. A complete ban on dog (& cat) meat is the only way to stop this. In 2009 a draft for an animal protection law in China was handed to the National People's Congress. Nothing has b0een done to implement the law. We know it is not going to end over night. Decades of work and government lobbying by Chinese animal activists and animal lovers will not be in vain.

Thank you for all your comments, messages of support and donations.
​We did the best we could but the situation didn't allow us to rescue as many animals as expected.
Thank you for fighting with us.

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25 June.
Our founder Du Yufeng and our team have gone back home to Guangyuan.
​The work begins now of continuing the care for the sick dogs rescued from Yulin Dog Meat Festival. We are very grateful for all your help and support during Yulin festival time where approx 10,000 dogs are killed. Your donations will continue to help the ones rescued. They will need rehabilitation, as well as veterinary treatment, which could take months. We hope that you will help us to find homes for these dogs, to help them to overcome their ordeal completely by finding a forever home.

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26 June.
​Do you remember the 2 Miniature Poodles who we saved this year from Yulin Dog Meat Festival? There's good news for one of them! He was fit and healthy and has been adopted by one of our friends in Guangzhou who fell in love with him. We know he'll be a spoilt boy!
The other poodle, a little girl, has not been so lucky. When our founder Du Yufeng rescued her, she found a hard lump in her throat and she was coughing a lot. She was taken to a pet hospital in Nanning and after some treatment, she was declared fit to fly so when Du and our team flew to Chengdu with her, they took her to Huai Ren pet hospital for a second opinion. After further investigations and blood tests, the vet diagnosed her with a serious lung infection, he can hear 'bubbles' when she breathes and, while having a full body check up, the vet found her abdomen was swollen. An ultrasound scan showed that she has thickening of her uterus wall with water inside. This is probably a result of her giving birth and then being stolen very soon after by a trafficker who took her to Yulin. She also has liver and kidney inflammation. So aswell as going through the most frightening experience in her life - seeing and hearing other dogs around her being slaughtered - she now has some serious things wrong with her. 
We have faith in the vets at this hospital, we have used them many times and, because of that, we are comfortable with leaving her there to be treated while we go back to the shelter to help the other dogs to settle in to their new home with us. 
As we've said before, rescuing is the easy part. The aftercare is the most anxious time while we wait to find out if dogs like this one will pull through so your donations will help this little lady to get the treatment that she needs. 
We will visit her soon and as we receive updates from the vet, we will update you about her treatment. 

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What Happens After Yulin Dog Meat Festival?

Meet some of our Yulin Dog Meat Festival 2016 survivors.
Our rescued dogs are being treated for diseases like canine Distemper and Rabies. 
The rescue is only the first step. Rehabilitating the dogs who have been through a very traumatic time is long term. Yulin may be well known around the world, for the wrong reasons, but the cruel slaughter of dogs and cats for their meat will continue to happen all year round in some parts of China (Yulin included). Whether it be in the open by butchers for restaurants or slaughtering the family pet, we mustn't just focus on Yulin. Help us to fight the dog and cat meat trade all year round by donating to be part of our education events.
We rescued 27 dogs from slaughter at Yulin. Buying the medicines needed to treat these dogs can be expensive. If you can help us treat these dogs over the coming weeks and months, please donate here.

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We Accomodate 30 Dogs Saved By Marc Ching

4 July.
​Over the past week we've been getting a part of the shelter ready for some new arrivals. We are welcoming 30 dogs rescued from Yulin Dog Meat Festival 2016. These dogs were rescued by Marc Ching, founder of Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation. We arranged to meet Marc in Yulin and after he rescued hundreds of dogs, various groups across China helped to house them. He reached out to ask if we could take some and we are happy to do our bit to help. Typhoon Nida has affected the transportation of the dogs and the arrival date of the dogs has been and gone but we expect them to arrive at our shelter tomorrow.

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5th August.
​The 30 dogs, rescued by Marc Ching of Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation at Yulin Dog Meat Festival this year are on their way to our shelter. Marc's team in Nanning loaded the dogs on to the truck at their end. The cages were tied down and so were the water bowls. The canvas roof was attached so that the dogs were sheltered from the sun. The driver has medical supplies on the truck with him and the paper work for transport. The video shows them at the start of their journey before the canvas roof was attached and then as they took a rest on the highway to Chongqing. They will arrive at our shelter soon.

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6th August.
​The dogs rescued from Yulin Dog Meat Festival 2016 by Marc Ching of Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation Foundation have arrived at our shelter. It is approx 1400km from Nanning, Guangxi to our shelter in Guangyuan, Sichuan so it has been a long, tiring journey for the dogs but this truck ride was not the kind they were forced to take when heading to Yulin. Now, we are working in to Sunday morning to get them settled for their first night in a new place.

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7 August.
​We worked into the morning, until about 7 o'clock, settling the 30 dogs, rescued from Yulin Dog Meat Festival this year by Marc Ching of Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation, into their kennels. They had been in their cages for around 20 hours from the time they left Nanning to arrival in Guangyuan and they were tired and hungry. Some of them had been travel sick and refused to eat anything but their tummies will soon settle.
When we went back to our founder Du Yufeng's house, there were some small puppies running loose around the stair entrance, a cardboard box nearby. We don't know if they were dumped last night or this morning. They have a skin disease. Why do people think that these living beings can be thrown away like rubbish?!

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8 August.
​The 30 dogs we have taken in to our shelter, originally rescued by Marc Ching from Yulin Dog Meat Festival this year, are settling in. The cages they travelled in from Nanning to Guangyuan have been washed and disinfected and the dogs have had some rest, food and water. Most are in good condition, others who are losing their fur are being given haircuts to keep the fur clean and matt free.

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9 August.
​It's feeding time at the shelter and it's the turn of Marc Ching's dogs, rescued from Yulin Dog Meat Festival this year, to be given their dinner.
Some of the dogs aren't too hungry but they are still getting used to the new sights, smells and sounds.
One little child felt the need to poop in the food bowl. Stress, trying to find their place in the pack and general change of scenery can be a coping factor for this type of behaviour so hopefully it will not be ongoing.

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To see our education blog, click here.

​Your continued support for our animals in China is truly appreciated.
​Thank you!

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