It’s nice to stop for a breath to write the blog as these past few days have been crazy beyond all belief. Last week saw our launch of Professor Paws in Guangzhou - the dog and cat eating capital of China(!) - where about 90 nine year olds enjoyed a unique way of learning at the paws of our newly recruited canine teachers.
Recently we had a very special visitor at our China sanctuary – world-renowned US animal behaviourist Dr Marc Bekoff. Marc was in China to promote his books, which have recently been translated into Chinese. This was his second visit to our rescue centre and it was such a pleasure to have him back on site.
Our rescue centre General Manager, Toby Zhang, and I had a very successful meeting with the head of the Wildlife Protection Department under the Sichuan Forestry, Madam Xiong Beirong on Wednesday, 29 October.
In what is a very exciting development, Harriet Tung, the wife of shipping magnate Tung Chee Chen and sister-in-law of Hong Kong's first Chief Executive, Tung Chee Hwa is speaking out on behalf of the bears.
Harriet has been following the Moon Bear Rescue for quite some time and now she has offered to use her knowledge and contacts to further our campaign to end bear bile farming. Please click here for the full story.
Since we rescued over 100 earthquake dogs in Dujiangyan in May and June, a construction team has been busy building the new Animals Asia-funded enclosures at a rescue centre we are co-operating with in
Chengdu.
A fond farewell to Jen O'Dwyer (our resident vet in Vietnam) for a few weeks as she leaves us to get married in Australia to her very own "Bear" – yes that really is the nickname of her husband-to-be, John.
Who could resist him? Laid out on our surgery table today in Vietnam with our brilliant vet team momentarily forgetting their serious faces and clucking around him like foster mums, David slept in total oblivion, breathing rhythmically and strongly as he received his first health-check ever.
This week saw our Dr Dogs involved in a truly remarkable exercise. Dr Eddie and our team of canine therapists reached out to executives of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC) – and charmed them all. We were invited to take part in a series of anti-stress workshops as part of HSBC’s Work Life Balance Day and visited four locations across Hong Kong.
One of the nicest stages – and sometimes one of the most heart-in-mouth moments – is when we start moving the new bears in their recovery cages closer to each other in preparation for guiding them into groups.
I’m so sorry to bring you more terrible news from Chengdu, but two more of our bears have passed away – Devon and Niki.
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