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    1.Category: Community Groups and Special Populations
2.Project Topic:Give me a home
3.Project Description: Changhua stray dogs’ shelter is situated in Yuanlin town, just at the boundary between Changhua and Nantou. Its location is quite remote with cemetery and landfill right in front of shelter’s entrance. All stray animals in Changhua County will be sent to the shelter. And lost animals will stay there and wait for the owner to reclaim. Caring people can come here and adopt lovely “hairy children”. Tray animals that do not be adopted for 12 days will be euthanized. Many hairy children live as if treading on thin ice. We hope that people can be aware of their existence through our reports, and make it possible for them to find suitable families. Changhua strays’ dog shelter will hold adoption activities in the third Sunday every month and welcome enquiry and support from interested people and friends. Apart from adoption activities, shelter will organize the “One Volunteer Day” event for caring people to look after stray dogs and to owe a great deal to the caring to these hairy children from the mass。
4.Local Community Changhua County is located in the western part of Taiwan Island. To its north is Taichung City, to its east is Nantou County and to its south is Yulin County. In the west, Changhua County faces the Taiwan Strait. Changhua has been famous for its fertile soil and therefore it is called "the Granary of Taiwan." Besides, the scenic views of mountains and historical architectures in Changhua are wonderful and attractive. Changhua is also well-known for its local foods. People around Taiwan love to visit Changhua for a taste of the delicious local snacks. All of these attractions make Changhua County a must-see place. The address of Changhua stray dogs’ shelter is No. 426, Ln. Abao, Yuanlin Town, Changhua County. It is faster to take County Road 139 to go to the shelter. County Road 139 is currently the heaven for cyclists and heavy-motor bikers. Because it runs through the plateau of mountain Bu-Guah with woods on both sides, most stray dogs haunt the surroundings of the road. In the absence of the village in these wilderness areas, common stray dogs have great influence on the safety of cyclists and heavy-motor bikers. An alley in Lone 875 by Dachang Road reside a vivid billboard on which reads “Changhua Stray Dogs’ Shelter”. Feeling oppressed after entering the small lone, you will see several private cemeteries. And you can hear dogs barking far away the shelter. There also is a garbage dump across from the shelter, and people who come here for the first time may feel unfriendly. The Stray dogs’ shelter is in an isolated building, the appearance looks like a hut farms. It does not have any neighbors, because most people hate it, reject it. All stray dogs’ shelters nationwide have similar encounter. When we started making this project, we asked a lot of native people in Changhua. They all said they did not know about the stray dogs’ shelter, showing its neglected, poor, remote environment.
5.Challenges and Breakthrough (1) Lack of Time: We almost missed the deadline. Changhua Stray Dogs’ Shelter belongs toAnimal Disease Control Center of Changhua County, whose headquarters is on Zhongyang Road. However, the shelter is not located in the Bureau. It’s far away in Yuanlin Town,just at the boundary between Changhua and Nantou. It’s remote and secluded. It takes us about one and a half hours to go there back and forth.In addition, our visit and interview can’t bother everyday regular jobs of doctors, volunteers and the staff. We can only use a little break time to ask questions. To avoid our waste of time, we need to rehearse procedures, discuss the information in hand, and ask brief and important questions before our visit. Unless we distribute tasks and overwork at night can we hand in our assignments in time. (2) Our Insufficient Ability in Computer Skills Although we often surf on the Internet, it doesn’t represent we have the ability to set up a website. We participate the workshop held by our school to learn the registration on the cyberfair, uploading our works, dealing with photos, as well as editing webpages, animation, and sounds. But to finish the workshop is one thing; to create the works is another. Without the teacher by our side, we may keep going on the wrong way. Thus, our teacher sacrifices his lunch break, waits beside us for answering our questions, and solves our problems about insufficient abilities in computer skills. (3) the Difficulties in Writing Articles and Feedbacks We have been busy with the cyberfair work during lunch break since last October. We spent most of time reading in formation on the websites, and then we started to write the articles and our feeling and comments. But our work didn’t go very well because we didn’t get the point and what we wrote was always returned by our teacher. It was another challenge for us to write down the interviewing conversation after the visit, especially how to make excerpts from our dialogues and how to make clear what the interviewer meant. Our teacher always corrected this part, returned what we wrote, and asked us to rewrite it. In order to make us understand what to do, our teacher demonstrated how to catch the points in person for us. We gradually got on track. (4) Love and Care for Stray Animals “Love and Care for Stray Animals” had always been a slogan for us before we worked on this project. We didn’t have an opportunity to carry it out. Thanks to our research for this project, we experience being “one-day volunteers,” pay a visit to the stray dogs’ shelter in person, keep every cat company, and caress every dog. Every being is so wonderful that we should respect it and never give it up. We don’t think it’s a good way to mercy-kill them after twelve days. Our government should search for a better way to solve this problem.
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