02/09/2026
CASS IS HERE. 🩷✈️🇬🇧
On the final day of our first trip to Harbin Slaughterhouse Survivors, a tiny cage was carried into the safe house. Inside was a little old Pomeranian.
Petrified. Matted. Broken down by years of being used for one purpose: to make puppies. Hayley lifted her from the cage that had been her entire world. And that was the moment we met Cass.
She had spent her life creating tiny, beautiful versions of herself for somebody else to sell. Those puppies may have gone on to warm homes, soft beds and families who adored them. But their mother stayed behind.
Hip dysplasia. Arthritis. Dry eye. Rotten teeth. A damaged jaw. Ear infections. Wounds. Urine burns. Matted fur. A little body carrying the consequences of years in which her comfort simply hadn’t mattered enough.
We will never know what Cass thought about during all those years.
We don’t know whether she knew there was another kind of life. But standing there that day, we knew one thing:
We could change the ending.
Before we left China, Hayley gave us an extraordinary honour. Five of the dogs rescued at the end of our trip were named after our little team:
Cass. Tim. Beth. Vanessa. Callum.
And as we boarded the plane home, we knew those names came with a promise.
We are coming back for you.
Last night, the first part of that promise came true. A place had unexpectedly became available with a volunteer flight buddy last month and she flew over with them before we got over . Her quarantine just ended …
And Cass came home. 🩷
After all those years.this little old lady finally gets to have a life of her own.
I have helped animals escape captivity around the world since the 1990s. Amongst those were Great Apes & Elephants, Cetaceans to Dogs and after decades of doing this work, you might think you become accustomed to these moments.
You don’t.
Last night, seeing this tiny old lady my namesake 😭 absolutely floored me. After a lifetime of being useful to humans, Cass finally gets something that belongs entirely to her: her own life.
What an unbelievable honour it is to be part of the moment somebody’s whole world changes.
And Cass’s story gets even better.
Our dearest friends Gemma and Dan have become such an important part of our lives since we moved to Lincolnshire. They are people who understand this without needing it explained.They don’t see borders when they look at an animal who needs help.
Borders are something humans drew on maps. Suffering doesn’t know which side of one it happens on.
If an animal needs us and there is something within our power to do, we will move heaven and earth to do it.
And now our little Cass is going to spend her retirement surrounded by senior dogs, ridiculous amounts of love, soft beds, good food and people whose only expectation of her is that she gets to be Cass.
Gemma is on her way over now.
And I cannot wait for what happens next.
Because somewhere underneath that frightened, exhausted little dog we met in China is a Pomeranian who has never yet had the opportunity to show us who she really is.
Tomorrow, we fly back to China for the others 💪 Please support their flight fundraisers we desperately need those funds to pay SHS for arranging them for us
Hang on, babies.
We’re coming. ✈️🐾❤️
