Animal rescuer shares home with 1,300 dogs

Wen Junhong has a soft spot for all voiceless animals

Chongqing: Twenty years ago, Wen Junhong saved an abandoned dog from the streets of Chongqing in southwestern China. She now shares her home with more than 1,300 of them, and they keep on coming.

After taking in that first dog, a Pekinese she named Wenjing — “gentle and quiet” in Chinese — Wen found she couldn’t stop.”Each of us should respect life, and the Earth is not only for humans but for all animals.”

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Dog ownership was previously termed a bourgeois pastime and banned under the leadership of Communist China’s founder Chairman Mao.

But that has changed dramatically since, and ownership has boomed. As well as the abandoned pets and strays that are regularly left in her front yard, Wen says she receives calls “every day to help more dogs”.

She also lives with one hundred cats, four horses and a scattering of rabbits and birds.Her day starts at 4 am with the unenviable task of clearing 20-30 barrels of overnight dog waste and cooking more than 500 kg (1,100 pounds) of rice, meat and vegetables for the animals.

Every room in the two-storey house is full of cages, piled next to and on top of each other.
Surrounded by fences and locked gates, her hillside location is the latest in a series of homes after complaints from neighbors forced her and her charges to keep moving.

Wen finances the operation with proceeds from selling her apartment, loans of up to 60,000 yuan ($9,100) and her pension and life savings from an earlier career as an environmental technician.

She also receives donations after gaining attention on social media, where she has been dubbed “Chongqing Auntie Wen”.

Even with her love of animals and a team to help her, Wen admits re-homing strays is a struggle.”It’s really very hard. There are more and more dogs and each of them gets less space,” said Wen.