Mê Thú Cưng - Pet Magazine for Vietnam Native Dogs in Vietnam Issue | Page 78

Cứu hộ, Chăm sóc và Phúc lợi động vật tại Việt Nam ‘Our Family’ Animal Rescue Group O n 1st of July, 2015, our team was formed and named as “Our Family“ with more than 20 members of all ages. Our mission is to rescue the stray animals not only in HCMC but also in Vietnam as well as to stop the dog meat trading as soon as possible. We also want to spread the love to more people in Vietnam as well as let people from other countries know that we are also fighting against dog meat trading. On the same date, we also published our Facebook Fanpage as a connection to all the dog lovers in Vietnam and from other countries. On 23-24th of July of the same year, we coordinated with ARC and successfully rescued a dog called ‘Lucky’ from Ben Tre province with her mouth taped. And ever since then, we received more acknowledgement from the society. Due to the great support from the society, we are now keep 78 moving on and trying to achieve what we have been planning on from the beginning. We also would like to send our best appreciation to ARC, especially Ms. Emma Patterson, Ms. Elizabeth Homfray and Dr. Nguyen Van Nghia from Saigon Pet Clinic for supporting us through all this months. Without everyone’s great support, we would not make it this far and successful. Since our first day, every day, we have to deal with hundreds of messages in our inbox and via our Fanpage. However, due to the limit number of members as well as our fund, we cannot rescue all of the cases we received. We can only help some of them and give them a safe life at our Shelter. Our shelter is smaller compared with other group as it locates within the city so we need to limit the number of animals to avoid problems with the neighbors as well as the local people committee. At our shelter, we have 2 shifts / Mê Thú Cưng | Tập 01 2017 | methucung.vn day in term of cleaning, cooking and feeding as well as taking care of the animals if they are not feeling well. At each shift, we will need to clean the house in every corner, the crates, cooking, feeding trays have to be cleaned again. Especially when there is a new dog, we need to pay more attention to his area in order to avoid any illness spread to other dogs. Most of the dogs and cats at the shelter are vaccinated and sterilized before available for adoption. Besides taking care of them, we also need to spend time to play with them so that they will be closer to human and ease their bad experience with people. In general, it is a long process from rescuing and taking care of them until they are good enough for adoption. In order to choose a new loving home for our animals, we also spend at least a month to finalize and finally send the animals to new homes. We need to make sure if