How can we do better as a rescue to address the big picture of animal suffering in Vietnam? To start, we need to understand the root cause of animals ending up in rescue to begin with.  The only animals people seem to pay attention to are dogs, so we will use them as an example (though they are actually suffering in the smallest numbers comparative to the other sea and land animals who are dying by the hundreds of millions here).   Den, the dog we took to the vet yesterday was hit by a car, but that is not the...

We really need to address something that has been flooding our inboxes for months now, often with abuse towards us and the Vietnamese in general. On YouTube there are some creator accounts in which monkeys are being kept as pets. We don’t watch them, frankly, because we are bombarded with them and no one should be adding to their views anyway. We’ve had people literally send hundreds to our emails in one day. It’s insane and needs to stop. In addition to the primate videos, we also get sent the fake rescue videos from somewhere on the massive continent of...

Within any social justice movement, activists will be attacked. They will be attacked for being too outspoken, too violent, and too confrontational. They will be criticized for their use of language, having every single sentence picked apart. They will gain and lose followers for anything seen as too far out there. This is normal when you fight for something which has been normalized in society even though it is harmful to someone or something. It is uncomfortable to be confronted with your own participation in something horrible as well. This invites a lot of criticism and bullying, no matter how...

The vital work of farm sanctuaries The animals that receive the most attention, the most funding, and the greatest legal and social protections are those we spend the most time with. These are the dogs and cats who we wake up to, see in our neighborhood, and who end up all over our newsfeeds. But these are not the species who need us most. It is the ones whose suffering is hidden in plain sight. It is the farmed animals we see driving through the countryside, the rows of their dead bodies wrapped in plastic in our supermarkets. These animals,...

Let’s lay some numbers out and you tell me how where you think attention and funding should be in terms of greatest impact for ending animal suffering.  Out of 900 million dogs living on the planet at any given time , 3% of them per year are killed for dog meat globally.  That’s 30 million animals.  2 billion pigs are on the planet at any given time, more than double the total number of dogs alive. With the exception of the tiny minority of them living in sanctuaries, ALL TWO BILLION of them are killed every single year.  50 billion...

Puppy snuggling. Doggie walking on beaches. Kitten kissing. Education programs by pretty, young white people to classes of non-white children to learn about aforementioned puppy snuggling and kitten kissing. Volun-tourism at animal rescues for twenty-something Westerners coming to Asia to “find themselves” and try to catch chlamydia on a drunk night in a beach bar. I am guilty of all of these and more in a vain attempt to “save animals” in Vietnam. I was a moron. Life lesson learned. Now in my middle-aged wisdom I get to call out people doing the same dumb shit. Adulting at its finest....

Substitute “China” for “Vietnam” in this meme and you’ll understand what we face as a rescue working for ALL species. I have often attributed my hatred of social media and contact with the public to my advancing age. It feels that with each passing year in this work I get closer and closer to being permanently out of f***’s for the insanity I read online. However, I feel I have finally worked out the culprit. It’s the daily contact through our media with racists and speciesists with their heads so far lodged up their own rectums that they can’t begin...