Dog Rescue Saves As Many As Possible

AP LEI CHAU, Hong Kong – Saving a life usually means gaining a faithful friend. By routinely saving lives, Sally Andersen has won thousands of friends, most of them with sensitive snouts and wagging tails.

“I do have a lot of friends,” Sally said. “I'm never lonely at home, despite living with no other people.”

As the founder and leader of the Hong Kong Dog Rescue (HKDR) charity, Sally visits government kennels (most often in Pok Fu Lam) about twice a week to see the abandoned dogs incarcerated there and facing euthanasia. She takes away those she believes most deserve another chance and for whom HKDR can find new homes.

“If I don't take them, no one will,” Sally said. “They'll be killed. No other organization does this work.”

Sally's noble mission occupies her seven days a week, as does a huge problem. How can she peer into canine eyes and decide who lives and, essentially, who dies?

“It's very stressful, the worst,” Sally said. “I hate it. For me, it's very difficult to look at a dog and know it could find a home, but to leave it behind to die just because of how many dogs we already have. I can't – I'll try to take it anyway – because it deserves a chance.”

Mind you, “some of it (the decision-making) is obvious. The pugs and the little ones – I'll always take them. They're the easiest to home. More people want them. Next it's golden retrievers and any friendly dogs. I nearly always take puppies too, unless they're really wild. The most difficult cases are mongrels, especially the adults.”

Signs of aggression rule dogs out. “If a dog rushes at me, showing its teeth and growling, I won't risk taking it. But if a dog is scared, yet I can approach and touch it, then I'd like to give it a chance.”

When in doubt, Sally returns. “At first, they could be stressed and frightened. So I may leave the final decision for a second visit.”

Although Sally wants to save nearly every dog, that's impossible. Each year, the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) “puts down” 20,000-plus healthy dogs, each after four days in custody. Angered by this peculiar “conservation”, activists often (futilely) urge the government to limit homeless animals by spaying or neutering instead.

HKDR can handle only a few hundred dogs at a time. So how does Sally ease the stress of making life-and-death decisions? “I just have to deal with it,” she said. “If I don't, no dogs get saved.

“Sometimes the stress builds. Then maybe I'll lose my patience with people and yell at them, especially if they say they want to surrender dogs. People unlucky enough to call me at the wrong time may get an earful.”

To balance her emotions, Sally focuses on the thousands of already-rescued dogs, each a success story. “That's the whole reason for doing this,” she said. “There's a big satisfaction in rehabilitating dogs, often bringing them back to health, and finding them new homes.”

As Sally spoke, a small, fluffy dog named Sparky, a Pomeranian-cross, sat quietly in her lap. Someone once surrendered him to the government kennels for “being aggressive”. In Sally's company, he looks serene and gentle.

Another dog, Gertie, partly Sharpei, watched from a doorway. “At the government kennels, Gertie was very scared, but not aggressive at all,” Sally said. “I knew she wouldn't find a home instantly, but thought that since she was sweet-natured, we could work with her and she'd become friendly. At first, she felt so terrified that she filled a vet clinic with (stress-related) diarrhea. That's why she's called Gertie – for being Squirty Gertie. But now she's lovely and sweet.”

Both Sparky and Gertie look to Sally and respond to her. Are most HKDR dogs so grateful? “I think so,” Sally said. “We can tell by how they respond. When their behaviors and characters change for the better, we know they're responding to a better environment and how we treat them.

“As for the homed dogs, sometimes years later they see me or volunteers who cared for them at HKDR fundraising events, and they remember. Each November we have a big event called Peak to Fong. We walk from the Peak to Lan Kwai Fong and have a big street-party there. Hundreds of people who have adopted HKDR dogs bring their pets. Many dogs recognize me or our volunteers and react enthusiastically by jumping up and with lots of tail-wagging. But the best thing is that after greeting us, the dogs turn back to their owners. They're happy with their new homes.”

Established in 2002, HKDR focuses on 3Rs (rescue, rehabilitate and re-home). It matured from a one-woman mission into a busy animal-welfare team with a half-dozen employees and dozens of volunteers. Each month, people adopt about 50 of the dogs.

“I founded HKDR out of necessity,” Sally said. “By chance, I learned about the government kennels and the policy then of no re-homing. Any dog going in was killed. So I started to help by taking some dogs. Officially, only organizations could do that so I had to form one.

“It began with one dog, then two. When Christmas arrived, short staffing at the kennels on the holidays meant that I had to take a lot of dogs or they'd be destroyed. On that Christmas Eve, I took 25 dogs home with me to Lamma Island.”

Now Sally ranks as Hong Kong's leading dog guardian. “Probably no one has more dogs than I do, at least legally. The government won't allow dogs to be registered to an organization. So technically, every dog in our care belongs to me.”

HKDR keeps about 200 dogs at its kennels in Tai Po. Twenty small dogs live at a homing centre on Ap Lei Chau.

Meanwhile, Sally has three remote houses together on Lamma where she lives with 80 dogs, mostly puppies and the few adults who have lingered the longest with HKDR. With so many “security guards”, she considers her home super-safe.

Do 80 dogs and one human living together create chaos? “It's amazing how well the dogs organize themselves,” Sally said. “At night, they all sleep inside. Between themselves, they decide where everyone sleeps. Even when I take them for walks, they all have their own places in the group as we go. It's always the same dogs on my right, the same dogs on my left, in the same sequence. They work everything out. I just oversee it.”

Living with so many dogs heightens Sally's understanding of them. “It makes me appreciate them more,” she said. “I know they're intelligent, can sense and feel, get lonely or afraid and experience emotions. Knowing them so well makes it harder for me to see how they're treated by people who don't understand.”

Dogs “can be everything – best friends, companions and more. Having dogs or cats is known to reduce peoples’ blood pressure. But for me, cats don't have the personalities or bring the enjoyments that dogs do.”

Only once was Sally seriously attacked by dogs. “I'd taken two bull-terriers from AFCD,” she said. “They'd been together a long time and were very loyal. I tried to put the female back into her kennel. The male thought I wanted to do something horrible to his mate. He launched himself at me and savaged me badly.”

That grim incident put Sally temporarily in a hospital bed, but didn't stop her work. “I know how to approach dogs, read them and keep myself safe when handling them,” she said.

"It wasn't the dog attack on me that made me understand how to keep myself safe and to read the dogs. That attack came from behind, and I wasn't even interacting with the dog in question so it wasn't anything to do with my handling.

"I've worked with stray, timid or wild dogs for more than 20 years and have been using my techniques for a long time before I was bitten. It would be impossible for me to go into the kennels at AFCD and take dogs that are terrified without knowing how to interpret their body and eye language and the signals that they give which tell me that they won't bite, and I have always done that."

Sally grew up in Germany, but she's British and later lived in London. “I always loved animals,” she said. “I had dogs, but horses were my passion. I worked at anything that left me with enough free time for horses. I knew people who needed their horses exercised.”

In 1984, Sally arrived in Hong Kong on a journey around the world and stayed. Soon she noticed the local dogs. “On Lamma, many dogs used to be abandoned off the fishing boats,” she said. “They turned up all the time. I tried to find homes for those dogs long before starting HKDR.”

Then as a business executive, Sally set up the New Age Shop, all about metaphysics, personal growth and alternative health. After selling that, she started HKDR.

Dog Rescue always needs donations and volunteers. It takes a massive effort to pay the bills, especially for veterinarians, and to care for so many animals. All dogs more than six months old get spayed or neutered. Dedicated volunteers ensure the animals are well exercised, socialized and happy.

Sally and her team insist that dogs deserve kindness and respect. Even badly behaved ones can reform. All HKDR training or rehabilitation involves positive reinforcement, not punishment.

Invariably, people who hit dogs worsen matters. “Owners who think their dogs misbehave, maybe by running around and playing, will yell at them and smack them. Then the dogs have no way to defend themselves except by biting.”

Lack of exercise causes problems too. “Some people never take their dogs for walks. Then they wonder why the dogs bounce off the walls. When those dogs finally reach us, they're fine. They just need some space and exercise.”

Anyone wanting to adopt an HKDR dog must complete a questionnaire. Then Sally and her team recommend suitable candidates. “We know our dogs and their personalities and try to match each dog to the right home.”

Mongrels often make the best pets. “A dog's health and personality are far more important than its breed,” Sally said.

HKDR welcomes donations of money, blankets, dog beds, crates or healthy dog treats. It holds fundraising events and even operates a small shop with dog-related products like calendars, desk diaries and books showing the candidates for adoption.

“We need HK$400,000 per month to operate,” Sally said. Most of it comes from small donations.

Will HKDR remain Sally's life-work? “I don't see how I can get out of it unless there's a radical change in government policy so that we're no longer required,” she said.

For more information: www.hongkongdogrescue.com


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