“If there are families in the U.S. or Canada willing to give one of our rescues a home, who are we to turn them away and not give that dog a better life?” said Liza Milne of Mary’s Doggies, a dog rescue organization in Taiwan.

The News Lens
Date: 2017/03/12
By: By Chieni McCullough, TaiwaneseCulture.org

Growing up in Taiwan in the 1980s, hardly anyone I knew kept dogs as pets. The only

Photo Credit: Cobris/達志影像

people I knew with a dog were my grandparents who lived on a farm about 90 minutes south of Taipei. Kuro (Japanese for “black”) was basically a guard dog that roamed through the rice fields that surround my grandparents’ traditional U-shaped farmhouse. He spent his days sleeping outside, eating our leftovers, playing with us grandkids whenever we visited and lounging around while my grandfather worked the fields.

Back in Taipei city, the only dogs I encountered were stray dogs that sometimes chased me on my way to and from school. They would often be afflicted with terrible skin diseases and be maimed by scooters or other unfortunate accidents. Once in a while, I would see a nursing mom with puppies behind some bushes and I would feel the urge to take one home, but I was always stopped by my mom. “Dogs are dirty,” she would scold me.    [FULL  STORY]