California Man Saves Dogs from Puppy Mills in Asia

SHERMAN OAKS — One California man is creating a world of change for dogs in China and Korea that are suffering brutal, torturous deaths in “dog slaughterhouses” and puppy mills.

Marc Ching is the owner of the Petstaurant, an “alternative” pet supply store, and is also the founder and owner of the Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation, a non-profit devoted to rescuing and rehabilitating severely abused animals who face sure death at the hands of the people who mistreat them.

Recently, Marc traveled 10,000 miles, halfway across the earth, to China and South Korea, to save the lives of dogs that are skinned, burned and dismembered while alive and breathing in puppy mills, slaughter houses and sometimes sold into a highly-lucrative black market trade in those regions. In doing so, he almost lost his own life twice.

“They said the last person who attempted this was killed,” Marc said in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News. “Korea is worse than China,” he explained recalling how he was taken hostage there with a machete held to his neck. In Korea, he was assaulted with a meat cleaver and had to receive close to 10 stitches on his right leg.

On social media, Marc posted pictures of dogs being tied up by their necks, dismembered in filthy warehouses and thrown against the wall, for all of his followers to see. “The abuse and inhumanity is so brutal out there that it doesn’t compare to anything here in America,” he explained.

I saw a guy chainsaw a dog in half. Another man took a club hammer, hit the dog in the back of the head. The dog was screaming and they are laughing at him. Then he smashed his foot with a hammer and just left it there to die. I saved that dog. But it wound up dying.

These dogs are “suffering persecution for the crime of being born as animals,” he said, noting that everyone has a story of suffering, including himself, and that these dogs are nothing less than human for him.

Most of the dogs Marc saved from slaughter wound up dying. Even in death, however, Marc said there is freedom. He posted on his personal Facebook page on Monday about a dog in particular he saved from a slaughterhouse that was so badly beaten she had to be euthanized.

He noted that dying in a place of “darkness and suffering” is not freedom at all, whereas a suffering being–even an animal–that finds “release in a place of healing” surrounded by “empathy and compassion” will find freedom from the shackles of torture in its passage from this earthly world.

Marc hopes to save many more dogs and wants to bring as many as he is able to back to America for adoption by loving, caring households. “They’re all waiting for their hero.”

He says he wishes he could help the growing number of women and children who are being raped and battered. “But I can’t. And so I do it for dogs.”

In the meantime, Marc’s foundation has been doing much for both human and animal torture and abuse victims. The Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation gives tortured and abused dogs to women who have experienced similar pain for adoption. “They have suffered a similar fate and so they understand each other. Nobody understands their suffering more than someone who has gone through it themselves,” he explained.

Additionally, Marc has announced that he will be teaming up with the Little Flower Orphanage in China to create the first-ever dog sanctuary in Beijing in an effort to save as many dogs as he can.

In return I will pay the orphans there to take care of the dogs. To train them and nurture them so they are healthy enough to be adopted out locally, with the more horrific cases being flown back home to Los Angeles to the Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation.

In the end, Marc’s message is one filled with hope. “This is what giving back is about. Sacrificing yourself for a cause you believe in.”

He said that he believes what is wrong with the world is that people always talk but rarely act. Marc says he’s doing what he does thanks to the great love and support he receives from his wife Linda, and is inspired to do what he does for his children. “So that when they grow up they can look at me and think ‘my dad looked at humanism.’ That’s whats wrong with the world and what I hate. People have forgotten what it means to be human.”

And while what I do may not change a thing, for the dogs that I save here on this journey – it is meaningful to them. It saves their bodies from being ripped limb to limb. It saves their souls from perishing in prison.

That is how movements are born. That is how cultures are created. One man and a single effort – it becomes a nation.

Follow Adelle Nazarian on Twitter @AdelleNaz and on Facebook.