Luke and I have a dog. We moved all the way to other side of the world..... and got a dog. What on earth were we thinking??? Well, I'll tell you. Luke and I are both animal lovers and lovers of dogs in particular, so when we became aware of just how awful the situation for dogs in Korea is we just couldn't sit back and do nothing. So we looked around and learned of the plight of a dog shelter in a place called Daejeon. An hours KTX train ride away from Seoul there lives a woman who could well be the patron saint of dogs in Korea. Mrs Jung has given everything up for the lost and mistreated dogs of Korea. She lives in a greenhouse with around 100 dogs and has pretty well been cut off by her family because of it. She takes in and looks after strays and misfits and even rescues some from outside restaurants where they are next in line for the pot. On top of all that, her sister breeds dogs on the very same property for the purpose of selling them to restaurants. So, Mrs Jung saves all the money she can to buy as many puppies as possible from her sister. Unfortunately, the council wasn't too pleased with Mrs Jung's efforts so they decided that the shelter had to be closed. Luckily, there is a passionate and extremely capable Aussie called Tim living in Korea who took action. Thanks to the efforts of Tim and many others the number of dogs in the Daejeon shelter has been dramatically decreased. When the volunteers first started working with Mrs Jung there were around 200 dogs in the shelter and these days I believe that figure is down around 75.
Luke and I went out to the shelter several times. We brought home a dog under the pretense of "fostering" it on our second trip to the shelter. It didn't take us long to talk each other into it, that's for sure! Over the course of a week we went from "no, we really can't take on a dog" to "we can't just do nothing! We'll foster one but we won't keep it." So, we came home with a thin, bony little fellow who was just a bundle of nerves and uncertainty. We'd named him Dusty before we'd got him inside the front door and it didn't take him long to steal our hearts and become so much a part of our lives that we just couldn't imagine being without him. He is the gentlest and most polite little dog I have ever met and these days he is healthy, happy and confident. He will also be calling Australia home as of March next year!
Dusty has really changed this experience for Luke and I. I think he's a big reason why we're still here, sticking it out for the full year. On days when things go wrong at school and I miss home so much I feel like crying all day, Dusty is there to comfort me in his own scruffy way. I just can't wait to see him in a Australian backyard!
If you would like to find out a bit more about animal rescue in Korea, check out http://www.animalrescuekorea.org/
Lucy
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