A self-proclaimed veterinarian in Chengdu, China, is currently under investigation for operating an unlicensed “clinic” on the street, and charging around 50 – 100 yuan to remove the vocal chords of noisy dogs.

Why would any dog owner want to remove their pet’s vocal chords, you ask? In this particular case, most of the shady vet’s customers told police officers that they had received complaints from their neighbors that the animals barked too loudly, so they decided to have them devocalized. That’s a gruesome thing in itself, but to have the procedure done by some random guy on the side of the street, with unclean surgical instruments is simply appalling.

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Zhou Yusong is known as the “Guardian of Dogs” in his home city of Zhengzhou, China’s Henan Province. The kindhearted man has spent the last 8 years of his life rescuing stray dogs and offering them a home at  his animal protection center.

It all started in 2008, when Zhou Yusong, when he noticed an injured stray dog by the side of a road in Zhengzhou. It had been hit by a car and was fighting for his life, but everyone just ignored it. Unable to do the same, he picked up the canine and took it to a nearby pet hospital. After saving the animal’s life, he took it to a dog shelter, as he had no way of taking care of it himself, in his small apartment. Shocked by the large number of stray dogs already at the shelter, he became more involved in trying to make their lives easier, and started donating 200 yuan ($30) every month, for the animal’s food and medical treatments.

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Bai Yan, a kindhearted police dog handler from Hangzhou, recently melted the hearts of millions of Chinese after it was reported that he had spent the last 7 years and around 1 million yuan ($150,000) on a retirement home for police dogs, where his former “comrades in arms” could live out their golden years in peace.

55-year-old Bai has been working as a police dog handler since 2004, during which time he has trained around 30 canines. Spending so much time with the animals, he became very attached to them, and having seen how some retired police dogs ended up, he knew he had to do something about it. The trainer recently told Chinese media that one of the things that convinced him to open a retirement home for police dogs was seeing  an old police dog who had been completely neglected by his new owner lying in the dirt with a chain around its neck and a bowl of spoiled food in front of him. Retired police dogs are usually put up for adoption with the general public, and there is very little vetting of potential owners.

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A number of blue dogs have been spotted near Navi Mumbai’s Taloja industrial area, in India, and initial reports that untreated industrial waste dumped into the nearby Kasadi River may be to blame.

Remember Huckleberry Hound, the adorable cartoon character created by Hanna/Barbera? He was a blue dog, but no one seem to find that weird. Then again, he was only a fictional cartoon character, whereas the blue dogs of Navi Mumbai are very real, which makes their unusual color a lot more disturbing. Photos and videos of several canines whose fur had turned bright blue went viral all around the world a couple of days ago, leaving people scratching their heads as to whether they had been doctored. Unfortunately, the Navi Mumbai Animal Protection Cell soon confirmed that blue dogs actually exist in Mumbai, and are the cause of excessive pollution.

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It’s been five years since we featured the touching story of Capitan, a loyal German shepherd who refused to leave the side of his owner, even though he had been dead for nearly six years. Well, believe it or not, the old dog still spends his days waiting by his deceased owner’s grave, 10 years after he passed.

Capitan’s undying loyalty for his master first made headlines in 2012, when local papers in the Argentinian town of Villa Carlos Paz reported that the dog spent every day waiting by the grave of his owner, Miguel Guzmán, who had died in 2006. The dog disappeared from the family home a few months later, and Guzmán’s widow, Veronica, was shocked to find him by her late husband’s grave, when she went to visit him at the cemetery. She and her son, Damian, tried taking him home several times, but he always ran back to be by Miguel’s side. Eventually, they understood that nothing they did could ever fill the void in Capitan’s heart, so they let him be with his beloved master.

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Even in a highly creative environment, work at the office can get pretty stressful, so a digital advertising agency in Bangkok, Thailand is encouraging staff to bring their pets, especially dogs, to work, to help them relax.

Walking into the Bangkok headquarters of Adyim, a successful digital marketing firm, it’s not uncommon to see young employees holding small dogs in their laps, stroking them with one hand and operating their computer mouse with the other, or even pooches playing on the table during an office meeting. In fact, company manager, Anankanat Kongphanich, encourages staff to bring their pets too work as often as possible, let them run around, and play with them whenever they have free time.

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When dogs get lonely, they sometimes keep themselves busy by wreaking havoc around the house, and that doesn’t really sit well with their owners. That’s why one German radio host, who also happens to be a dog owner, came up with the idea for a 24/7 program designed to relax canine listeners and make them feel like they are not alone.

When 30-year old Stephan “Stocki” Stock, a radio moderator at RadioTon, in Germany’s Baden-Württemberg region, announced the creation of a program aimed at dogs, everyone thought it was just a clever April Fools prank. Only it wasn’t. For the past three and a half months, “Hallo Hasso” has been pumping out music for lonely pooches both on the radio and online.

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In January 2017, a series of fires in central Chile’s La Maue region burned down over 457,000 hectares of forest, leaving behind nothing but charred ground. Now, three border collies are helping replant it all by doing what they love most, running.

Das, Olivia, and Summer, three female border collies have been working hard to bring the fire-devastated forest back to life, since March. Not that they know how hard or how important their work is, since they are essentially running and playing. The dogs’ owner, 32-year-old Francisca Torres, takes them to various areas of charred forest in her truck, equips them with special vests that come with special satchels which she fills with seeds of endemic plants. Then the dogs are sent out to run around and spread as many seeds as they can. When they return, she rewards them with snacks, fills up their satchels and sends them out on another run.

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A dog shelter in Nikopol, Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk Oblast region, recently received a call from a concerned animal lover begging them to help her rescue a dog that had fallen down an exposed drain and had been stuck there for three years.

The shocking story was shared on July 2nd, on a public dog-themed Facebook group, by Elena Omelchenko, a volunteer at the Nikopol dog shelter. Apparently, a girl named Lena called the shelter and practically implored them to rescue a dog that had fallen down an uncovered drain, into a complex central heating system, three years ago, and had been living there ever since. Lena and other kindhearted people had been throwing the dog food, but, so far, they had been unable to rescue it.

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Eclipse, a black Labrador-bull mastiff mix from Seattle, really loves going to the park. So much so that when her owner is too busy to take, or when he’s taking too long, she just leaves the house by herself, gets on the bus and goes to the park by herself.

It all started one day, four years ago, when Eclipse and her master, Jeff Young, were waiting for the D-Line bus at the bus station. The dog knew they were going to the park and she was impatient, so when the public transportation vehicle pulled up and the doors opened, she just jumped right in. Jeff was smoking a cigarette and decided to just wait for the next bus, but Eclipse wouldn’t hear of it, so she ignored his commands to come down. So she just rode the bus by herself and Young caught up with her later, at the park. While impressed with his pet, Jeff Young had no idea that this would eventually become a habit, one that would turn Eclipse into a local celebrity.

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A small dog’s loyalty recently melted the hearts of millions of Koreans, after the media reported that it had been waiting for his owner to return home for three years, not knowing that she never would.

A few years ago, an old lady from Busan, South Korea, adopted a cute little stray dog that she named Fu Shi. The two lived happily for a while, but tragedy struck three years ago, when the old lady suffered brain hemorrhage which eventually led to dementia. She had to be taken to a nursing home to be under constant special care, and the small pooch found itself all alone again. But he had no idea that the old lady was never coming back, so he spent the last three years waiting for her.

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As man’s best friends, dogs deserve the best in life, and when it comes to housing, a UK company is ready to offer them just that. Hecate Verona is all set to launch the world’s first line of luxury dog mansions, with the most expensive models costing up to $200,000.

Hardwood floors made from beech, oak and larch, walls, columns and balconies carved from marble and dolomite, indoor and outdoor lighting, automated food and water systems, treat dispensers, TV and sound system, these are just some of the things you can expect when paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a luxury dog house for your beloved, pampered pet. They are the best pet homes money can buy, but with prices starting at around $40,000 and reaching up to $200,000 for the high-end models, you’re going to have to spend a lot of it.

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Up until a couple of years ago, Mark Ching was a successful businessman who dedicated his free time and resources to rehabilitating abused dogs in Los Angeles and finding new homes for them. But then he heard about the horrors of the dog meat trade in China, and after witnessing them first hand he dedicated his life to rescuing as many canines as he could from dog slaughterhouses across Asia, even if it meant putting his own life at risk.

Mark’s life changed in 2015, when he heard about an annual event in China called the Yulin Dog Meat Festival. He knew that the Chinese and other Asians ate dog meat, and he accepted that as a cultural thing, but what he couldn’t understand was the unspeakable torture that the animals were apparently subjected to before being killed, to supposedly make their meat tastier. It didn’t make any sense to him, so he bought a plane ticket to China, put on a backpack and flew to Yulin to learn more. The gruesome scenes he saw on that first trip to China were more horrific than he could have ever imagined, and while they left him traumatized for life, they also transformed him into a brave activist willing to risk his life to rescue as many animals as possible.

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Pratima Devi, a 65-year-old ragpicker from New Delhi, India, has dedicated the last three decades of her life to caring for stray dogs. Rummaging through trash and running a small tea stall barely allows her to support herself, but she’ll gladly skip a meal or two to feed the hundreds of dogs she looks after on a daily basis.

The “Dog Lady of Delhi”, ad Pratima has come to be known in India, never had an easy life. Born into a poor family, she got married to a man 10 years her senior when she was only 7 years old, and had her first child at age 14. Her marriage was not a happy one, as her husband would often come home drunk and beat her, and both she and her mother suffered at the hand of her in-laws. Her husband didn’t have a job, so she had to work all day and take care of the house to make sure they had food on the table.

When he was 5 years old, the oldest of her three children went to New Delhi to work, and when living with her abusive husband became too much to bare, Pratima followed him to start a new life. There, she started working as a domestic helper in the house of a popular model-turned-actor, and later set up her own tea stall, in the Saket neighborhood of Delhi. It was here that she met her best friends, stray dogs.

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Remember the tragic yet heartwarming tale of Hachiko, the loyal Akita Inu who spent nine years waiting for his owner to return from work, not knowing that he had died of a brain hemorrhage? His legendary loyalty is now being emulated by Thor, a dog of the same breed, who goes on the same walk he and his departed owner used to go on, every day.

Every day, the people of Caçapava do Sud, a town in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul region witness a touching display of animal loyalty. In the morning, Thor, a white Akita Inu, takes to the streets, retracing the daily walk he and his owner used to take up until a year ago, when the 58-year-old man died. He stops at all the usual places his master used to spend time in, lets those who know him pet him on the head and even poses for pictures, before returning home to his adoptive family. That’s become his daily ritual for the last year or so.

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