NI nurse helping on front line but frustrated that dogs are stuck in China

Gabby Gardiner, a locum emergency nurse and dog rescuer, is happy to be able to help humans during the pandemic but is very disappointed that her ability to save animals has been curtailed.

The 29-year-old from Belfast was in China in October in her role as founder of Little China Dog Rescue, a charity dedicated saving dogs from the meat market.

She said: “We were hoping to go over again at the start of this year, but unfortunately, obviously, due to the virus it was cancelled.

“We currently have 62 dogs stuck in China, God love them, until we get the green light to go out and get them home.”

She added: “Understandably as a rescue it’s putting us under huge financial strain.

“As of this morning we had to close our doors to new intakes just because we’re finding funding very tight. We’ve had to cancel bucket collections, fundraisers, donations online are struggling as well, everyone is struggling bless them.”

In terms of the possibility of dogs coming from China carrying the virus, Gabby said: “They think [Covid-19] has come from the wet meat markets, from bats primarily.

“Dogs do get coronavirus but they cannot contract or carry Covid-19 which is the strain that is affecting us humans.

“The particular strain which they catch and which they’ve always caught for years and years and years, all of our dogs in the UK are annually vaccinated against it, it just presents itself as mild diarrhea and vomiting symptoms in them.”

She added: “I haven’t been to those markets myself, I personally refuse to go there because I find it only compounds the problem. We work directly with the activists who go to the meat markets.

“As a westerner walking into a meat market you can make a situation 10 times worse for local rescuers who are trying to save those dogs.

“The butchers see us as rescuers and know we’ll do anything to save those dogs so they put the money up tenfold. They pretty much blackmail you for the dog’s life.”

Explaining how the activists work, Gabby said: “There’s a lot that would buy dogs from the meat markets.

“Quite often these dogs are stolen family pets, street dogs or ex-breeding dogs. When dogs from big breeding farms are considered old stock that the breeder no longer has use for, they just sell them on to the meat markets which is a heartbreaking situation.

“The other way is you’ll have activists stop the meat trucks. They have to have permits for every single dog on the back of the truck to state that it’s for human consumption, so the activists will call the police out.

“Obviously nine times out of 10 those shipments are illegal because they’ve got stolen family pets in the back so nine times out of 10 the dogs will be handed over to local rescuers.

“From there they all go into shelters. Shelters are a varying standard in China. You have huge shelters of three thousand plus.

“In these shelters rescuers struggle to feed the dogs, provide veterinary care, and a lot of the dogs die in those shelters.

“That’s why we’re trying to focus our efforts on pulling the sickest out of those shelters because they’re survivors of the meat trade and they’re dying in another horrific situation.

“At the moment we can’t bring any dogs into our care however we’re focusing on building our own small scale shelter within China that will be to western standards.

“While we can’t actively rescue any more dogs due to financial crisis, we’re going to use this lull to focus our efforts on getting this shelter that we are building up to scratch with the local rescuer we are working with. It has the capacity to hold 150 to 200 dogs.

“We’ve got a lot of anxious adopters who just want their babies home. It’s just a matter of getting them out as soon as we can.” 

Away from dog rescue Gabby is a locum emergency nurse leading the fight against Covid-19. 
She said: “I’m currently working across the Province in A&Es fighting the virus alongside my colleagues.

“Everybody is doing a sterling job, everybody is working very, very hard.

“For me, I’m working four to five night duties a week as well as trying to manage the rescue and the added pressure from that.

“I work permanent nights, shifts are typically 12 hours. I would fill any staffing shortages across Northern Ireland.

“Thankfully I’ve stayed fit well and healthy myself. I’m following the government regulations, coming straight home after work.

“My fiance, he’s also a doctor so he works as well in the hospitals.

“At the moment we’re not seeing a lot of each other. We’re a bit like ships in the night.”

Gabby set up Little China Dog Rescue (initially called Doggy911) with her fiance Chris Sheehan.

She said: “When we set out it was as a fundraising group, we didn’t expect to be a full blown rescue operation.”

Her first rescue pup was toy poodle Ollie who had been used for medical testing in Harbin Medical University for four years, and when deemed no longer useful was sold to the meat market.