This is Maisie, an adorable and super-affectionate golden retriever/spitz mix who was rescued from the horrific southeast Asian dog meat trade…luckily, she is now safe, but desperately craving a forever family to call her very own! When Maisie was rescued, she was in the ‘crush cage’ pictured, about to be illegally smuggled across Thailand’s border into Laos, and then Vietnam, where she would have been slowly tortured before being eaten – a customary practice, as adrenaline is thought to make dog meat more tasty. Today, against all odds, she is instead prancing with joy to be safe from harm!
The Thai Royal Police, suspicious of a large tarp-covered truck that was about to cross the northern border, discovered dozens of dogs huddling in terror and crushed into rusty wire cages like sardines. They were rescued and sent to an overcrowded government livestock center – saved, BUT NOT SAFE. Unfortunately many dogs cannot survive at these facilities due to overcrowding, lack of food and clean water, lack of medical care, and deadly diseases and dog fights.
A kind person saw Maisie’s photo and saved her life. She was sponsored and transported to the Thai island of Koh Samui, where she now lives at a dog sanctuary with nearly 700 other dogs, most of them fellow dog meat trade victims. She is so happy to be there with dog mom Elfe, who loves them all. But she is lonely…she plays with her doggie friends and desperately vies for attention from visitors to the sanctuary because she clearly wants nothing more from life than a home and people to call her own.
Maisie is a petite 2 year old spayed female golden retriever mix, weighing just 22 lbs. The International Street Dog Foundation looks forward to welcoming Maisie to Chicago with open arms in late April/early May. We know the perfect family is out there just waiting for her to join them and make them complete, and we cannot wait to see her in a forever home, at long last.