A retiree living on a small pension left her family to devote her time to looking after abandoned pets, leading a financially strapped and difficult life. The Wuhan-based Changjiang Daily reported the story of the 58-year-old woman and her dogs.
Fang Jiangxue began to adopt stray animals five years ago when she rescued a skinny homeless cat from the streets of Wuhan in Central China where she lives. Once she asked a friend to look after the cat while she went on a trip, and the cat hardly ate anything during those nine days. This touched Fang's heart and made her determined to save more animal lives.
Fang now only rescues abandoned pet dogs. She has lived in nine different places with her adopted canines to avoid annoyed neighbors complaining about her. Fang's husband couldn't stand the hardship and chose to live separately from her. The woman loved the dogs so much that she even missed her mother's funeral in another city looking after these animals.
The woman rents 13 rooms in a rundown area to shelter the currently more than 120 dogs, one third of which were picked up by herself and the rest found in streets and brought in by others.
Despite reproaches and not being recognized for her charitable work, the hardest part for Fang is how to feed the 120 dogs enough food with her pension of merely 700 yuan a month as it costs her 4,000 yuan monthly to keep those animals.
So the woman collects leftovers from a restaurant to feed her fidos, and gets a free meal for herself every day. Occasionally some animal lovers donate food and money to her.
Even though the dogs are kept in the packed rented rooms because Fang cannot afford a better accommodation, she believes her place is much better for them than being abused on streets and starving to death.
However, the future for the woman and her dogs has become even more uncertain as the area where she lives is soon to be demolished to build new properties.
