American nurse Lee Yijie holds down two jobs for a group of elderly Akita dogs who are both injured and sick. In order to save the stray dogs that have come from Taiwan across the sea, Lee Yijie almost lost her marriage. She is not invincible, as she plans to stop at three more dogs because the passing of a dog is too heartbreaking.
“I have always loved dogs,” Lee Yijie said casually. Her feelings towards sheltering stray dogs are no different from other dog lovers, except she is in a farmhouse in Virginia on the other side of the Pacific. Upon seeing an Akita dog in need of rescue in a Taiwanese dog community, she felt a tug at her heart, reminiscing her first Akita, Momo. Despite the geographical distance between Taiwan and the USA, she hesitated but kept an eye on the Akita dogs through the screen, hoping to find good homes for them. Upon seeing someone adopted one, Lee Yijie breathed a sigh of relief.
“Two weeks later, this dog was posted again by the community, in a very critical condition, with no part of its skin left unscathed, many wounds. The reason for its return was that the owner was mentally unstable,” Lee Yijie blamed herself for not asking her mother in Taiwan to check on the dog earlier.
The regret of the “if only I knew” lingered in Lee Yijie’s heart. In 2018, after bringing an Akita dog that wandered in a graveyard to the U.S. with the help of a friend, the next year, a illegal pet breeding facility in Yunlin was exposed, which made her determined to spend a fortune and embark on a rescue mission across the sea.
Most of the dogs and cats in the Yunlin breeding facility had inflamed eyes and dehydration due to the filthy living conditions. Over 200 dogs and cats were used for breeding, many with swollen nipples indicating they had been bred multiple times.
Lee Yijie decided to first rescue three Akita dogs. She moved to a countryside farmhouse with a large yard and with the help of friends, agents, and anonymous heroes like the “dog transport ambassadors”, she gradually airlifted the stray Akita dogs back home. At its peak, Lee Yijie had a total of 21 dogs in her home – Achung, Rou Bao, Qiuqiu, Migoo.
Not to mention the trouble of customs clearance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the cost of air transport skyrocketed from $2,000 to $10,000, she also had to take back a southern Akita dog with aggressive behavior, fearing that without her intervention, it would end up being euthanized.
The quarantine and flight costs for the Akita dogs were astonishing, but for Lee Yijie, it was a one-time expense. The ongoing medical expenses for their care were the heaviest burden on her shoulders.
These Akita dogs that came across the sea were mostly elderly ones that no one adopted, with varying eye, bone, and skin conditions. New family members with broken legs, epilepsy, or bleeding joined every year, and Lee Yijie had many cans of health food and medication on her desk to feed them in batches every day. Sometimes, she had to rush to various veterinary clinics to pull the dogs back from the brink of death, with MRI scans and joint surgeries alone costing over $10,000.
“Caring for strays is truly a bottomless pit,” Lee Yijie had to shuttle between the emergency room and the intensive care unit, working five days a week for 12 hours. This almost frantic dedication had not been disclosed to her parents in Taiwan, causing her Korean husband, Cho Uihyeon, to explode, leading to them signing a separation agreement after arguments.
But Cho Uihyeon now understands Lee Yijie’s feelings. They have divided the responsibility of walking the Akita dogs into 4 shifts, not relying on miracles but the nearly 3 years of communication that Lee Yijie has invested. She told her husband that she would bear all the expenses, ensuring that the Akita dogs would not become a burden. Lee Yijie understood that living with a house filled with Akita dogs greatly impacted their quality of life, yet she refused to let go.
“They are all rescued by me, each one is a life. If I don’t help them today, they will be in a tough spot,” she stated.
Lee Yijie’s husband, Cho Uihyeon, commutes six hours round trip between home and office three days a week to take care of the Akita dogs. Before meeting Lee Yijie, Cho Uihyeon had zero experience raising dogs. When he saw the first injured Akita dog at home, he was shocked, thinking they would only have one dog at most, not knowing the number would eventually increase to 21.
“I don’t know if you are married,” Cho Uihyeon asked the journalist. “Married life isn’t just about oneself, it requires balancing each other’s lives. I know her intention to rescue dogs is good, but as time went by and with so many things to do and money to burn, both of us were under pressure. We had to give up travel plans and alone time, making life less enjoyable.”
Only after understanding that rescuing Akita dogs across the sea was Lee Yijie’s calling, Cho Uihyeon had a change of heart. Although they were not living in luxury and bathing a group of Akita dogs may seem crazy, it was not as tough as living in a war zone or the end of the world.
Throughout the nearly 20-minute phone interview, Cho Uihyeon rarely mentioned himself, focusing more on his sorrow for Lee Yijie. He mentioned that taking care of patients in her primary job was physically exhausting, and for the past 6 years, she had been taking care of one elderly Akita dog after another. He worried that one day she would be physically exhausted and her health would deteriorate, leaving him with no choice but to do his best.
Regarding the highlights of rescuing Akita dogs, Cho Uihyeon believed that although they couldn’t provide the dogs with an extravagant life, at least they provided a place to stay and agricultural land where they could run freely.
Furthermore, Akita dogs do not complain about their circumstances like humans who are never content and always unhappy. “So, in a way, I have also learned something from the Akita dogs. When a new responsibility arrives, face it positively.”