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.
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