A recent video of a man rescuing a family dog from a local Cambodian slaughterhouse has taken the internet by storm and is raising awareness of an often overlooked and diabolical industry; the dog meat trade.
The jarring footage gives us just a glimpse into the everyday horrors of dog meat slaughterhouses.
Be warned, the images below are quite graphic and aren’t intended for the faint of heart.
Just a couple of weeks ago, Mongrel Noun, a 7-year-old family dog, was snatched from her home as a form of payment.
Her owner, who remains unnamed, owed the slaughterhouse owner just shy of $3,500.00, a sum he borrowed to settle up old gambling debts.
When Noun’s owner failed to pony up the dough, the slaughterhouse owner took Noun as collateral for the amount he was owed.
Thankfully, though, Noun’s family wasn’t giving her up without a fight.
Shortly after Noun was taken, her Cambodian family reached out to known animal rights advocate Michael Chour, with an urgent request to rescue their beloved dog.
Chour is the founder of The Sound Of Animals, a rescue charity meant to relieve and put an eventual end to the dog and cat meat trade that still exists in Cambodia today.
The dog-loving activist began his mission over a decade ago when he first encountered the dog meat trade in Buriram, Thailand when dog-slaughter was still legal there.
Now that the awful meat market there has banned dog slaughter, the money the charity receives in donations goes to their after-care and sterilization.
Some of the funds were recently used to build the Blue Dream shelter, so rescuees will have a safe-haven.
As soon as Noun’s family reached out to Chour, he got to work trying to secure her rescue.
Within 24 hours, Chour had raised enough money to fly to Cambodia from his home in Thailand to start working on negotiations to free Noun.
Chour explains that making such negotiations is a careful business, as the local mafia oversees the meat trade.
“…you cannot get worked up and start a fight, because these people are dangerous. This is a very dangerous place, it’s run by the local mafia. I had to try and negotiate to get them for free rather than buying the dogs, which would fund the market.”
Thankfully, Chour found Noun just in the nick of time…
After negotiating her freedom, Chour went to the slaughterhouse to grab Noun helping her to narrowly escape the butcher’s blade.
The terrified dog was found with her collar still on, while her leash was used to tie her tightly to a wall so she couldn’t move.
What’s worse, they found Noun tied up in a plastic bag, with only her head poking out so that she could breathe.
To top the abuse off, all of Noun’s teeth had been broken to prevent her from biting her tormentors, a common practice among the slaughterhouse employees.
As Chour moves through the slaughterhouse in the heartbreaking video, you see dead dogs strewn across the floor.
“The slaughterhouse was filthy, it was covered in dog body parts all over the floor, there was staff chopping up dogs, boiling dogs, and their bodies being thrown on the floor.”
Chour describes the dog-meat either skinned and hanging or sitting chopped up in a large bucket while living dogs, like Noun, lie in wait among their disemboweled peers for the same wretched treatment.
“They were killing and processing hundreds of dogs a day and the live dogs were kept in a cage at the back of the slaughterhouse, awaiting their fate.
It smelt of death. It was worse than hell.”
Fortunately, The Sound Of Animals charity and its passionate supporters were able to keep Noun herself from meeting her end at the slaughterhouse.
Chour explains that she was given vitamins and antibiotics at a local vet after being rescued.
“They opened the vet especially to take Noun in and she was given pain relief. She will stay with the vet in Cambodia for one week and will be given all necessary care. Hopefully she will get a forever home”
Chour’s video of the slaughterhouse serves as a grim reminder that, although the tradition of dog/cat slaughter for meat is deeply rooted in some cultures, it doesn’t make it right and there is a way to stop it.
Noun will spend her time recovering at the Blue Dream animal shelter in Thailand before being adopted out in either the US or the UK, where she won’t have to worry about ending up in the slaughterhouse ever again.
If you would like to learn more about The Sound Of Animals rescue work or to make a donation, you can do so here.
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