A dog has been named the mascot of the Tainan City Stray Animal Welfare Association to help with its fundraising efforts.
Chiaohu (巧虎), a four-year-old dog that is to appear on the animal welfare group’s merchandise, is a rescued dog with a distinctive tiger-stripe coat and a clipped right ear, which marks him as having been neutered in Tainan’s no-kill animal control program that the group is promoting.
Chiaohu, which in Mandarin means “clever tiger,” was rescued from a gutter in a litter of three puppies by the group’s volunteers, the association said.
Chiaohu’s mother likely abandoned him and his siblings because she was spooked by Lunar New Year firecrackers, they said.
The dog, originally named Hsiaohu (小虎), “little Tiger,” was much bigger than his siblings and demonstrated a knack for learning tricks, having learned to sit down, shake hands and lay prone on command within 10 minutes of instruction, the volunteers said.
During this time, the volunteers began to call him Chiaohu, the association said.
However, Chiaohu’s strange coat was apparently not popular with prospective adoptive families and after being returned to the shelter multiple times, the association adopted Chiaohu to be its mascot and lucky charm.
The association said that while it relied on small donations in the past, it was driven to adopt a more vigorous fundraising strategy because of its drive to encourage more counties and cities in southern Taiwan to adopt Tainan’s successful no-kill program.
The goal is to convert as many county and city governments as possible to a trap-neuter-return paradigm, the association said.
“The association’s goals are to control the population of strays on the front lines, but also to take the initiative in finding homes for neutered strays and save them from kill-shelters, so that we might move to the second stage [of animal control policy] and implement TNA [trap-neuter-adopt] programs,” the association said.
“Our organization rescued 300 stray cats and dogs and placed them in loving families this year alone. We hope that one day, Tainan’s successful experience can be replicated in every corner of Taiwan to make this a nation where people and animals live together in peace,” it said.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said it had deployed patrol vessels to expel a China Coast Guard ship and a Chinese fishing boat near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. The China Coast Guard vessel was 28 nautical miles (52km) northeast of Pratas at 6:15am on Thursday, approaching the island’s restricted waters, which extend 24 nautical miles from its shoreline, the CGA’s Dongsha-Nansha Branch said in a statement. The Tainan, a 2,000-tonne cutter, was deployed by the CGA to shadow the Chinese ship, which left the area at 2:39pm on Friday, the statement said. At 6:31pm on Friday,
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, would pose a steep challenge to Taiwan’s ability to defend itself against a full-scale invasion, a defense expert said yesterday. Institute of National Defense and Security Research analyst Chieh Chung (揭仲) made the comment hours after the PLAN confirmed the carrier recently passed through the Taiwan Strait to conduct “scientific research tests and training missions” in the South China Sea. China has two carriers in operation — the Liaoning and the Shandong — with the Fujian undergoing sea trials. Although the PLAN needs time to train the Fujian’s air wing and
STRIKE: Some travel agencies in Taiwan said that they were aware of the situation in South Korea, and that group tours to the country were proceeding as planned A planned strike by airport personnel in South Korea has not affected group tours to the country from Taiwan, travel agencies said yesterday. They added that they were closely monitoring the situation. Personnel at 15 airports, including Seoul’s Incheon and Gimpo airports, are to go on strike. They announced at a news conference on Tuesday that the strike would begin on Friday next week and continue until the Mid-Autumn Festival next month. Some travel agencies in Taiwan, including Cola Tour, Lion Travel, SET Tour and ezTravel, said that they were aware of the situation in South Korea, and that group
Taiwanese celebrities Hank Chen (陳漢典) and Lulu Huang (黃路梓茵) announced yesterday that they are planning to marry. Huang announced and posted photos of their engagement to her social media pages yesterday morning, joking that the pair were not just doing marketing for a new show, but “really getting married.” “We’ve decided to spend all of our future happy and hilarious moments together,” she wrote. The announcement, which was later confirmed by the talent agency they share, appeared to come as a surprise even to those around them, with veteran TV host Jacky Wu (吳宗憲) saying he was “totally taken aback” by the news. Huang,
RSS