Worried About Your Pets if You’re Quarantined? This Group Can Help

When pet owners are taken away to quarantine sites, what will happen to their furry companions who, more often than not, might be left home alone? Lanling Animal Rescue Team is on a mission to help quarantined families in Beijing transfer their pets to pet-care centers while their owners are away. To find out more, I spoke with Liu Yintong, who works with the organization.

Hi Liu! What drove you to provide services like this?
Well, due to the recent uptick of coronavirus cases in Beijing, there are many pet owners worried about what might happen to their pets and they want to know what will happen if they are transported to quarantine sites. I have seen places like Shenzhen and Shanghai setting up pet centers, so I thought to myself: why not set up a pet center here in Beijing?

Can you walk us through the process of how your organization helps people to take care of their pets while they're away?
Well, if pet owners wish to take their pets to pet centers, there are several places around town that we can take them to.

When we receive a call from an owner who needs help, we will send a team of our volunteers to pick up the pets within 48 hours. Then we will send them to one of the pet centers.

Do you offer a home pickup service if the owner needs to be quarantined immediately?
Yes, if any pet owner needs to leave immediately and cannot take their pets with them, we will take their pets to a pet care center within 24 hours as long as we get prior consent from the community.

In case of an emergency, residents can always leave their keys in the care of the commuity, and our team members can video call the owners to ensure their pets are doing okay and everything in the apartment is alright.

What are conditions like in these pet care centers?
Firstly, your pets will be taken to a center close to you. We keep all the pets separate from each other because we certainly don't want pets to get into fights and come back to their owners injured.

Each pet has about six square meters of space to roam around. In the afternoon, when the weather is nice, we will take each dog out on one of the huge lawns to run for a while. Dogs are fed twice a day, and occasionally we give them chicken biscuits as a treat as well.

Many pets have had a great time here, and you probably won't believe this, but when their owners come back, lots of the pets don't even want to leave.

Do you have any interesting tales from your time running these care centers?
We recently helped a pet owner in Fengtai District. The individual desperately needed someone to take care of his pets, so he reached out to us. He also said that there are many other pet owners within his community who were worried about their pets facing similar fates. So, we created a group chat on WeChat and he invited the other pet owners into the group. In the end, we were able to transport about 60 pets to the pet care center.

How can pet owners contact the organization?
If any pet owner has to face quarantine, they can reach out to us by adding our WeChat: lanlingjiuyuan or call us directly using this phone number: 13361053614. We are always available to call.

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Images: Beijing Lanling Rescue Team