In Taiwan, since the implementation of the “zero-culling” policy in 2017, public animal shelters in various counties and cities have been expanded and optimized as “animal homes” and even renamed as “animal protection education parks”, except for Taipei City, which is the best district, where the animal home has not been renovated. In fact, the building is not only temporary, but has been in use for more than 20 years. In addition, it is often overcrowded with dogs, so even the legislators are urging the renovation.
The animal shelter in Taipei City was originally located on the outskirts of the city in the middle of a hill, and was moved to the side of the garbage dump in Neihu in 2000.
In the Taipei City Government’s project announcement, it was stated that the Taipei City Animal Home “aspires to become a humane and educational facility in Asia” and therefore the design concept had four main goals: (1) friendly shelter, (2) re-homing, (3) life education, and (4) parent-child recreation. In order to accommodate the existing dogs and cats, a relay park will be built nearby during the renovation period, and it is planned that the construction of the relay park will start in January and be completed in October 2021, while the construction of the new animal home will start in November 2021 and be completed in November 2023.
In order to achieve the most advanced standard in Asia, the planning version of the new animal shelter had a single room design, that is, each dog has a room, and the room even installed a TV to relieve their boredom, and at one time there was also a relocation plan to leave the landfill, thus making the project cost surge to USD800 million, which was unacceptable to the mayor and had to redraw the planning.
The latest proposal is to rebuild the original site, which will have a kennel for 700 dogs, a storytelling museum, a multimedia classroom, a pet supply vending area and a medical center, with a construction start date of July 2024 and a completion date of July 2026. The variable is that a new mayor of Taipei will be elected in November 2022, and it remains to be seen whether the new mayor will accept this proposal.
The happy news is that Dr. Jing-Yu Yang, the veterinarian who proposed the establishment of a medical center in the new animal home, has donated an X-diagnostic machine with a market value of more than one million dollars to the relay campus, in the hope of providing ideal medical care for the elderly shelter dogs and cats. In his plan, the medical center at the new animal home can be turned into a municipal animal hospital for the benefit of all the dogs and cats that have been given away, and when there is room for more, it can be opened to the general public.