Lazarus looked as if he'd been roasted alive. Ariel couldn't walk. Dumbo was suffering from gaping wounds on his head and one of his legs had swollen to four times its normal size. The three dogs had been left to die when a local charity found them.
"I just want to stop the suffering," said Sean McCormack, who co-founded Animals Taiwan (動物台灣) just over a year ago, during a recent interview at Grandma Nitti's while three of his rescues-turned-pets -- Cookie, a Rhodesian ridgeback mix, Prince, a striped tu gou (local, cross-bred dog), and Chocolate, a mongrel -- sniffed under the tables. "It's just this desperate feeling that we have to help them."
The 38-year-old Englishman didn't plan on spending most of his waking hours chasing dogs and cats, but that's what's happened. In little more than a year, his group has helped more than 130 animals.
One of their first rescues was Lazarus, an akita mix who weighed 10kg -- half the normal weight -- and had lost much of his fur when he was found near Wulai (烏來). "It looked as if he had already died," McCormack said. "His skin was red and black and pink and bloody and greasy. You could see the muscle on his leg."
McCormack intended to put Lazarus to sleep. But when he stroked the small patch of fur left on Lazarus' head, the dog responded and McCormack saw that he wanted to live. A posting on Forumosa.com generated donations of NT$29,000 for Lazarus' medical bills. He recovered, was adopted and now weighs 25kg.
Ariel was rescued from a Neihu shelter by another volunteer. She had been hit by a car and will never use her hind legs again. Now she gets around on a doggie wheelchair. ?"You should see her now,"? McCormack said. "She just flies."
Dumbo, who was named for his big ears, also pulled through and is awaiting adoption. "We thought he would die," said volunteer Becki Hunt, a 29-year-old English teacher from Canada. "But he came back to life."
In a city where, according to the Taipei Municipal Institute for Animal Health, owners abandon an estimated 10,000 pets each year, Animals Taiwan volunteers have their work cut out for them. Hunt said she can log a dozen hours in one day helping organize fundraisers. "People can be so cruel to animals," she said.
To be sure, Taiwan has come a long way since the late 1990s, when figures as diverse as the Dalai Lama and Jackie Chan (成龍) pleaded with the government to improve animal welfare. Then, packs of wild dogs were a common sight in cities, and cruel methods such as wire nooses and electrocution were used to catch and kill them.
In 1998 the Legislative Yuan responded by passing the Animal Protection Law, which imposes fines of up to NT$50,000 for cruelty to animals and mandates that only humane methods be used to destroy animals.
Jack Sheu (許桂森), former section chief at the Council of Agriculture's Animal Industry Department, which oversees enforcement of the animal protection law, said the number of strays in Taiwan has declined to 180,000, from 600,000 in 1999. Nationwide, half of all pets are now registered with the government and 23 percent have been spayed or neutered.
Forty percent of stray dogs are adopted, according to a CNA report, while nearly half die of disease or are destroyed by animal control officials.
Sheu said the Council of Agriculture spends NT$10 million annually on animal welfare education. Some of the money goes to producing educational pamphlets and CDs. Officials visit schools to talk about animal welfare, and volunteers hand out fliers near MRT stations and parks to encourage would-be pet owners to adopt strays and sterilize their animals.
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