News and Features
International Dog Adoption On the Rise
By Kelly Parkatti published Nov 1, 2012
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With a lack of suitable animals locally, prospective owners pursue international adoption
Shane and Christyna MacKinnon pace nervously at YVR as they await Flight 0032 from Taipei. “I’ve got butterflies,” Christyna says. The young Richmond newlyweds are waiting to meet their new family member: a longhaired dachshund/Formosan mountain dog found on the streets of Taiwan. They adopted the dog for $500 after seeing its photo on the website of Ocean Dog Rescue. “I don’t want to buy a dog from a puppy mill or get a designer dog from anywhere,” Christyna explains. Besides, Shane adds wryly, “You know there’s no other dog that looks like this in Richmond.”
When the animals arrive, a mob of adoptive families swarms them. Finally let out of its crate, the MacKinnons’ new pet wolfs down its first meal after the 11-hour flight. “I’m a proud mama,” Christyna sighs.
The last few years have seen a major increase in volunteer-run rescue groups like Ocean Dog, specializing in finding homes for strays and shelter dogs. Many pet stores have stopped selling dogs (Richmond banned the practice) and now help place rescues instead. In line with this trend, some rescuers are focusing on bringing in dogs from outside B.C.—from California, Mexico, even India. The cachet of owning a dog from an “exotic” locale could be one reason; another is that Metro Vancouver appears to be lacking its own adoption supply.
“We have more demand than supply for dogs in British Columbia,” confirms Craig Naherniak, general manager of humane education for the BC-SPCA. And with the high percentage of condos and apartment-style housing in Metro Vancouver, he agrees that small dogs have become a particularly hot commodity. “There’s such a demand for small dogs that they don’t stay in our shelters long.” I found this out firsthand after a year’s fruitless search in shelters for a dog to fit my strata’s under-25-pound restriction.
“Many adoptive families come to us saying they can’t find a dog through the SPCA, especially when it comes to small dogs,” says Renee Hsieh of Ocean Dog Rescue. “The breeds and sizes available are not a match for all the people that want to adopt.” Hsieh joined Ocean Dog Rescue after moving from Taiwan, where she had been a rescuer for 15 years. Most people there buy “purebred” puppy-mill dogs from pet shops, she says; if after a couple months they don’t know how to handle the dog, it’s typically abandoned to a shelter to be killed or left to fend for itself. She says there are two million strays in Taiwan.
For the last three years Barbara Gard, a retired school psychologist, has been adopting out dogs from India through her rescue organization, Adopt an Indian Desi Dog. While visiting an international school a few years ago in Mussoorie, a hilltop town in India’s Garhwal Himalayan region, Gard came upon village boys repeatedly throwing a puppy off a cliff. “I had a jacket and scooped him up. He was five pounds; he would have died.” On subsequent trips to India, she brought back more and more dogs, eventually setting up a rescue in Canada with the help of an Indian veterinary clinic—the reason she purchased her three-hectare mountainside property in Abbotsford in 2009.
Gard points out that engaging in international dog rescue while dogs at home still need help is just as rational as international human aid. “Why are we sending money for water projects in Africa when we have no water on our Indian reserves? This is the same thing.”
