More than 1,100 dogs in China are waiting for new homes after being rescued from the slaughterhouse last week with the help of a blogger, who helped authorities intercept the animals while they were being transported in deplorable conditions for the purpose of human consumption, China Daily reports.
The dogs were being shipped from Southwest China's Chonguing province to a slaughterhouse in Guandong province, a journey which would have left the dogs crammed into cages without food and water for 22 hours, according to the Daily Mail.
Luckily, a 40-year-old blogger and volunteer for the Chongqing Small Animal Protection Association who goes by the name Peng spotted the dogs being shipped in stacked cages on a flatbed truck and posted a plea online to save them, China Daily reports.
Peng's blog post tipped off animal activists and local law enforcement officials who were able to intercept the dogs, which were then taken to a pig farm in Southwest China for emergency care, according to China Daily.
A donor has since offered a 1,000 square meter warehouse to house the animals while they are nursed back to health. Local animal lovers have also donated enough food to feed the dogs for the next 20 to 30 days.
Now, volunteer activists for the Chongqing Small Animal Protection Association are searching for new homes for the animals, but say finding suitable homes for more than 1,000 dogs seems to be an impossible task.
Chen Mingcai, head of the Chongqing Small Animal Protection Association, estimated that 20 percent of the animals will be adopted locally. But the remaining dogs 800 will still need more space to live comfortably until a permanent situation can be found.
"Now I am thinking about calling for more social donations to build dog houses," Chen told China Daily.
While consumption of dog meat is banned in most countries, some people in China, Indonesia, Vietnam, South Korea, Mexico, Taiwan and the Philippines still consider the meat a delicacy. In these countries, dog meat can be found on many restaurant menus, according to Action for Our Planet.
But in China, where the consumption of dog meat has occurred in some areas for thousands of years, a growing animals rights movement has led to more activists to push authorities to crack down on the practice, the Associated Press reports.
Last April, around 200 people blockaded a truck carrying dogs to the slaughterhouse for 15 hours until they were able to negotiate the animals' release for $17,000, according to the Associated Press.
In September, for the first time in 600 years, residents of Qianxi, China, were banned from holding an ancient dog-eating festival after public outrage erupted on the Internet, according to The New York Times.
"I believe China is going through a Chinese animal liberation movement, a bottom-up movement, gaining huge momentum in the past year, very much with the help of the Internet and [Chinese social networking site] Weibo, together with the younger generation growing up with cats and dogs as family pets," Deborah Cao, a professor at Griffith University in Australia who studies animal rights law, told The New York Times last year.
WATCH: Report on the April, 2011 incident from the Associated Press: