My rescue Labrador was destined to be eaten: Dogs like her are raised in filthy, barren cages and then hanged or bludgeoned to 'make the meat tender': WINIFRED ROBINSON

I will never forget the day I learned that William, our beautiful, velvet-eared gentleman of a labrador, would soon die. He’d been slowing down and the vet did some tests. We were out in the garden together when she called to tell me he had cancer.

I put the phone back in my pocket and knelt to get on with the weeding. As the news sank in and I started to cry, I felt the familiar nudge of William’s muzzle. He was tucking his head under my arm to comfort me. Anyone who has loved a dog will tell you, this ability to read and respond to human emotion is their greatest gift.

William had been part of our family for 11 years. We gathered to say our last goodbyes – me, my husband Roger and our son Tony who had pestered so hard for that dog as a boy. William had gone within a few weeks from being well enough to be out with me in the garden, to being unable to move from his bed in our kitchen. He gave his last friendly wag to the vet who came to put him to sleep and seemed to sigh and shudder slightly with his last breath. It was as though his sweet soul left his body from the head down, through his gorgeous brush of a tail.

We all cried buckets and agreed to a long break before considering another dog. Except I couldn’t adjust to my new dog-free life. I missed the over-the-top enthusiasm of William’s greetings when I came home – his full body wag. I missed the way he would push his nose under the pages of the newspaper to remind me it was time to get up from the sofa and out into nature. I missed his instinct for joy, how he’d come racing into the room if he heard us laugh.

For Winifred it was love at first sight with Maisie

After a few months, I went online, browsing local rescue centres. But in that Autumn of 2022, as the world emerged from the Covid pandemic, there’d been a rush on pets. Many of the shelters were empty. Then I saw a dog advertised for rehoming on the online marketplace Pets4Homes. Maum, a yellow Lab, was gazing soulfully into the camera. She looked so like William, it might almost have been him. The ad said she was five.

It was only when I clicked to apply to adopt her that I discovered Maum was being offered for re-homing by a charity set up to rescue dogs from the meat trade in South Korea. I wondered if I had the skills to take on a dog like that, but I filled in the application form anyway and was quickly contacted by Louise Trevatt who along with a group of friends, founded the charity The Dog Team UK in 2017. It’s based where she lives, in the village of Middleton-by-Wirksworth in the Derbyshire Peak District, an ancient settlement of stone cottages tucked into the hills. This place has become a hub of safety for these Korean dogs – nine have been adopted by families there. Louise has four Korean dogs of her own.

I was aware of the dog meat trade in parts of East Asia but I guess I had preferred not to think about it. When I did some research I saw that dogs have been raised for meat in South Korea for centuries. Up to a million are killed every year. But that isn’t the worst of it. A report in the House of Commons library detailed how these dogs spend their short lives in filthy, barren cages, without shelter from the heat and cold. They are slaughtered in cruel ways – hanged or bludgeoned – because of a belief that the adrenalin that courses through their bodies at the end will make their meat more tender.

Louise told me she too had had some vague knowledge of the dog meat trade, but when she saw the evidence of what was happening on social media, she was so disturbed by it that she knew she had to act. She talked with friends about it and a group signed up to volunteer in a shelter in South Korea. Later they set up a charity of their own, The Dog Team UK.

Dogs like Maum are supplied for rehoming in the West by dog lovers in Korea who rescue and foster a fortunate few until permanent homes can be found. ‘The volunteers close down the farms and take dogs to a shelter which keeps them physically safe but Korea doesn’t have an established dog adoption culture and so the dogs need to get to the US, the UK or Europe otherwise they spend their lives in the shelter’, Louise explained.

These dogs spend their short lives kept in filthy cages

‘Abandoned dogs that have been family pets are also at risk,’ she told me. ‘Dogs are farmed in South Korea for the pet trade too, often in the same bleak conditions as dogs reared for meat. I have seen breeding dogs in tiny cages, stacked on top of each other, mess literally raining down on them. Their puppies are sold in markets in vast numbers. Most people in South Korea live in massive high-rise buildings not suitable for dogs. When the puppies grow and families can’t cope, they take them to the city pound.

‘I have been told that people who want to eat dogs can present themselves at the city pound, adopt dogs, then torture, kill and eat them. That is why the volunteers help out at city pounds too, to save the dogs they can.’

Maum came to us in a consignment of six dogs that left Incheon International Airport in Seoul in sturdy fibreglass crates, placed in a climate-controlled section of the aircraft’s cargo hold. They have enough food and water to last for many hours. To comply with UK law all have been quarantined, including being vaccinated, neutered, microchipped and wormed. Louise and her team of volunteers meet the dogs on their arrival in the UK, loading the crates into their cars. They greet each dog with kind words, food and gentle music to soothe them in their first few hours.

I was, and remain, full of admiration for the dedication and precision planning it entails, for the heroic things that people do quietly, without fanfare or praise. The dogs are matched with adopters who are carefully vetted. We met Louise to collect Maum on a freezing November night at a motorway services car park, splitting the distance between us.

A short drive later, we carried the crate into our kitchen and opened the door. Maum emerged, ate some food, used the puppy training mats we’d been advised to put down and slept solidly for the rest of the night. For me and my husband Roger, it was once again puppy love at first sight, just as it had been with William.

Maisie is now the laid-back labrador she was always meant to be

The good news is that since we adopted her, in response to calls from animal welfare campaigners at home and abroad, the government in South Korea voted to begin phasing out the dog meat farms and restaurants from 2024. They will close for good next year. They are anyway no longer profitable because demand for dog meat has slumped, particularly among younger people.

The worry is what will happen to the many thousands of dogs still being held on farms when the transition is complete. ‘I am extremely concerned that here will be chaos in South Korea as these meat farms close. The victims will once again be the dogs,’ Louise said.

I’d like to say Maum settled in like a dream, but that wouldn’t be fair to expect from an animal that had been through so much loss and upheaval. She was very scared of men at first, including my husband and would bark at him whenever he moved. She was wary of other dogs and in the early days, lunged and growled at them on walks. Louise and her team were very supportive, putting us in touch with a dog behaviour specialist. There followed months of patient training until Maum, whose name we changed to Maisie, settled into being the super laid-back labrador she was always meant to be. 

Winifred Robinson is the presenter of You And Yours on BBC Radio 4; thedogteamuk.co.uk