American Chronicles: Pet Projects

During the pandemic, we turned to animals for companionship. Now what?

Nick Paumgarten

Jeffrey Beri arrived in Guangzhou near the end of April and spent two weeks quarantined in a hotel. A few times a day, officials in hazmat suits came to check on him. He watched television news and stewed over what he perceived to be Communist Party propaganda and a crackdown that China was launching on pet dogs. “You just want to throat-punch everyone on TV,” he told me by phone, half whispering, certain that the room was bugged. “You feel like a caged animal, watching your kids get slaughtered.” By kids, he meant dogs, the ones he couldn’t save from the Chinese meat market while he languished in quarantine. Beri, a fifty-six-year-old former jewelry designer, is a co-founder of an organization called No Dogs Left Behind, which rescues dogs in East Asia…

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The New Yorker (Digital) - 1 Issue, June 28, 2021

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