Thousands of dogs fall victim to the illegal Dog Meat Trade in the Philippines every week. So many trucks and van loads of suffering concealed dogs head from the south provinces, past Manila on their trip north to the mountain City of Baguio – considered the ‘strong hold’ of the dog meat eaters.

Ruthless individuals cruelly capture these poor dogs from the streets, or steal pets from private gardens and pass them on to the illegal traders. The dogs’ mouths and legs are tied up. With no food or water for days, they are then crammed into trucks and transported for up to 15 hours in sweltering heat to slaughter venues, often crushed under false floors to evade police checks. There they are brutally slaughtered for their flesh, dying alone in pain with no one to help them.

I know which one I choose.

The Mountain city of Baguio is the ‘epicenter’ of dog meat eating, which incidentally is about an hour away from our sanctuary. It’s not only the locals eating dogs, but many Koreans also living there demand dog meat.

Eating dogs started long ago in the Philippines. If a family had some bad luck, they would eat the family dog in a superstitious belief that they would be ‘guarded’ against any future bad luck by the spirit of the dogs’ spirit. The more bad luck, the more dogs eaten until they ran out of dogs to eat, so they started buying in more dogs and so the trade began. Only when the dog meat trade was made illegal in the late 90′s did the trade move underground, and the real horrors began.

Some of the “lucky dogs” who are rescued arrive at our sanctuary, sometimes only to die shortly after their rescue due to the trauma of the ordeal. We can only hold their paws as they pass away. Before any of the dead on arrival dogs join the many other victims in our graveyard, we remove all ties from their snouts and legs before we bury them in a final attempt to afford them some dignity. We can only hope that their souls find peace.