Save a life, get a friend

PHUKET: My name is Bianca Peace, I am 10 years old and I wanted to share something that I think is very important and must be stopped.

At Phuket International Academy (PIA) our end of year project was on a topic of our own choice, but it needed to be about something global, so I chose to explore the dog meat trade in Thailand, because I have a huge love for dogs, just like my mum.

Before I share my sad experience with you, I want to tell you what the dog meat trade is, just in case you’ve never heard of it. In the North of Thailand there has been a trade of dogs being sold for food. Sadly this has been happening for many years and is still going on today.

These unlucky dogs are captured violently from the streets by smugglers (who are usually Thais) then squeezed into very small chicken crates, loaded onto trucks, many crates at a time and driven to the Mekong river where they are smuggled across on boats to Laos and then on to Vietnam.

This can sometime take several days and the dogs are so tightly packed into these cages that their bodies and limbs are broken due to the rough handling of the cages.

They get no food or water for such a long time and many of them die before they are even sold. The dogs that do arrive at the destination alive are then sold to local markets where people often torture them further and sometimes skin them alive and cook them up to eat for dinner. These people often believe that pain inflicted on the dogs makes their meat more tender.

After doing a lot of research on the Internet, I found out there are several dog shelters in different parts of Thailand which are kindly supported by the Soi Dog foundation. This organization has rescued thousands dogs from ending up on the dinner plate and now the dogs are living in various shelters in Nakhon Phanom, Khemmarat, Buriram and Thong Pha Phum.

I asked my mum if we could take a trip up to Nakhon Phanom in the Northeast of Thailand to visit one of these shelters. It was a very very sad experience, seeing hundreds of very skinny, sick dogs with no place else to go. Of course if they go back on the streets, these smugglers will capture them again and this time they will probably be eaten.

So, sadly they have to spend the rest of their lives with hundreds of other dogs in a shelter where the risk of catching distemper or some other deadly disease is very high, because there are so many of them living in cramped conditions.

This was a very, very sad trip and I saw much pain and sadness as I helped treat some of the sick dogs in the doggie hospital. I tried my best to go around and tend to them all, but I spent a lot of time just crying and feeling helpless.

I feel that this awful trade must be stopped! We fell in love with a couple of lucky dogs and my mum and I decided to adopt them and fly them back to Phuket (thanks to Nok Air, who did this free of charge).

The two dogs were very happy to come to our home, but there are still hundreds of dogs there that would love to be adopted and find a real loving home.

If you would like to adopt a dog rescued from the dog meat trade please send me an email. (see below for details).

I will personally choose a beautiful dog for you and send you some photos and inform you about his or her personality.

I want to visit this shelter again and I keep thinking about how I can help more of these dogs have a better life. Maybe you can help me make this happen?

Dog of the week – Orea

Hi, my name is Oreo and I am a lucky dog as I was rescued from the dog meat trade in Thailand.

Thank goodness I was rescued from being skinned alive and served up on some-one’s dinner plate. I am about 2-3 years old and a very handsome male Thai/mixed breed. I like to be top dog of the house and get all the attention, so I would prefer to be adopted by a family with no other pets.

If you are interested in adopting me I would love to join your family. I make a great guard dog who would love you forever.

I can be adopted into the USA, Canada, UK or Thailand.

— Bianca Peace