Gina Boehler, founder and executive director of Korean Canine Rescue, joined Cheddar News to discuss how her foundation helps bring dogs from South Korea to the U.S. and how animal passion has changed her.

<div class="block">Gina Boehler, founder and executive director of Korean Canine Rescue, joined Cheddar News to discuss how her foundation helps bring dogs from South Korea to the U.S. and how animal passion has changed her.</div>

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Dogs Rescued From South Korea and Brought to the U.S.

Time for chatter. Pause a segment where we highlight dog adoption and fostering this morning. We have a guest with a very special story. Gina Bowler is the founder and executive director of Korean Canine Rescue. That's an organization that rescues and rebilitate dogs from South Korea and places them up for adoption here in the US. Welcome. Thanks. Thank you for having us and tell me more about. I can't. So yeah, is our three year old female border Collie and we rescued her from uh a really cool puppy mill in South Korea. Uh and she had just got here about 10 days ago and she's been doing really, really well. I mean, she literally just has her head in your lap. She came to me for snuggles. You are the sweetest tall. Look at her. She has a lot of love to give and, and yes, you can tell. And animal rescue has been your passion for years now since 2017. I believe you took a, a family trip to South Korea. It changed your life. You visited a rescue facility next door to a dog meat farm. Tell me more about that. That, that's right. When I visited this II, I was always doing locally in New York City. But being my background of, uh, being South Korean, I wanted to visit a shelter of what it's like in South Korea. And not 505 100 ft down the road was a dog meat farm with 200 dogs in it. And that's the first time I've ever bore witness to such extreme suffering and cruelty. And, uh, it just ignited something in me to, to help these dogs that had no outlet and no place to go because the adoption rate in South Korea is less than 15%. And here it's almost, it's 100% really. So we uh immediately I took action and brought some dogs over for adoption and it's just been a wonderful community support. Why do you think the adoption rates in South Korea are so much lower? And I should mention it's not just South Korea, it's a lot of Asian countries, South Asian countries. This is not just, you know, specific to South Korea. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of it just has to do with uh the apartment sizes and you know how packed the demographic is of people living in small spaces and it's hard for to have a dog. But the mentality is changing South Koreans, the community is changing there and people are adopting more. So, um you know, it's, it's progressing pretty rapidly and I do want to mention most South Koreans don't support the dog meat trade Welfare Welfare Organization say there's still about 3000 or 4000 dog meat farms in the country. That is a lot. How do you help these animals? Oh, well, we go in there and our rescue teams that are local in the ground. There's a, there's a big community activism of animal lovers and dog lovers that will go in and try to find illegal activity, which isn't hard to find in these dog meat farms, report them to the municipal authorities and we're able to go in there and take all the dogs and shut the dog meat farms down, demolish them so that they can never come back again and give opportunity to the owners of the farm that there are other options out there that um you know, are better for the community, the environment, the dogs, everybody, what are the challenges that you face when dealing with these farmers, these farm dealers, a lot of them are just kind of at the end of their rope. They don't wanna do it anymore. You know, there's a cultural stigma to it. And um I think that really helps kind of like motivate them to uh have the, have the help to figure something else out besides raising dogs for consumption. And you mentioned, Renee just got here 10 days ago. How are these dogs transported to the United States? We use flight volunteers and it's a wonderful group of volunteers that are visiting. If you're visiting New York City or Los Angeles and business, uh, pleasure vacation, whatever it is, then you can bring a dog with us for, for us, for our rescue and we'll pick them up at the airport. Uh, how, what are, what are some of the maybe misconceptions around this that you probably hear from Americans as well? Uh, misconceptions about the dog. Yeah. Yeah. Well, um, I think that it's, it's a, a big thing, you know, like it's really not, it's very small segment of population that consumes dog meat like less than 2%. So, uh that, that cultural stigma is, you know, it, it's, it's not a widespread and South Korean shouldn't be thought about as a country that consumes dog meat because every country has their own issue. I'm so glad you mentioned that I, my background is Pakistani and these misconceptions are out there as well. Adoption rates are low. Like we mentioned, they are in South Korea. Tell me about your work here in New York City, your rescue work before you know, going to South Korea changed your life. Yeah, I was just um rescuing a lot of dogs from the south. So similar situations where uh we would have like overcrowded shelters in the south and bring them up from the south to the north where there is a much larger demographic to adopt dogs. And it's kind of the same situation I think New York City is a huge community that welcomes dog lovers and they, they, they love to, you know, embrace these dogs no matter where they're from. So it's just a great environment here for, for animal lovers. So for people who want to adopt or just want to help, what can they do? They can go to our website, Korean canine rescue dot org and you can volunteer, you can adopt. We really need fosters. There's a huge foster shortage right now in the country. So even just opening your home for two weeks to help a dog like Renee, um, gives them a second chance. Um, tell me more about just adoption rates when it comes to your organization. Yeah. Well, since, um, 2017 we've adopted out 3500 dogs, the tri state area. 2017. Yeah. Yeah. In Los Angeles, we adopt two and as well as Boston and, um, we've never, thankfully had to euthanize a dog. We've always had a high adoption rate at 100%. So, uh, the community, like I said, has really embraced these dogs as more and more dogs come into the country. Do you hope to expand your organization? We hope to expand, not only with adoptions, but also with the work that we do in South Korea because that's really important. There's a huge animal activist community there that loves dogs and cats and they're doing a wonderful job of spreading the word and that's really, what we're about is awareness. What's the ideal owner for somebody who's these dogs that have gone through this kind of trauma? That's a really good question. Ideally, you want to be some that has kind of like a stable lifestyle for the first year, maybe not moving around or traveling so much. And also putting a little bit of training and time and patience into these wonderful dogs because they do come with a trauma background. But with patients love and time and training, they blossom into, you know, a different dog. So we know Renee is a border collie. Any different, what kind of dogs are brought to the US? We have a lot of the Native Korean breed which is called Jindo or Korean Village dogs. What are they? And they're kind of like a shiba inu type looking dog. Yeah, except a little bigger. Um, they're a hunting breed. But what's great about them is that indoors? They're great for apartments because they're very catlike and very laid back and outdoors are very active. So perfect for the New Yorker or the city person as well as the, the person that lives in the suburbs, any language barriers here. Not yet. It does help if you know a few Korean words like sit, sit and Renee is just so sweet. She's been here for about 20 minutes. She's just wanting snuggles and love again. Just remind our viewers if they want to adopt Renee or just help this organization. What can they do? They can go to our website, Korean canine rescue dot org. And there's a lot of different options from donating to adopting volunteer and fostering. And, uh we'll set you up for success. Uh You know what, Renee I can, whoever takes Renee home is gonna be a very, very lucky owner. Thank you so much, you know, Bola from canine Rescue. And of course, Renee.