It’s now two weeks since our 28 bears escaped their hellish existence on a farm. Sadly, for 11 of those bears, escape meant a premature death and no chance to experience the freedom and love that we so much wanted to give them.

The 17 surviving bears are precious to us and we’re determined to give them every opportunity to make the most of the rest of their lives. 

This weekend we said goodbye to Jen O'Dwyer, our lovely Aussie vet who flew over from our Vietnam sanctuary to help out with the rescue. (Jen, on the left, is pictured here with fellow vet, Lara.) 

After back-to-back health-checks, surgeries, post-mortems and funerals, Jen was glad she finally had a little down time to get to know our newest residents before she returned to Tam Dao.

In Jen’s words:

“It is so wonderful being able to spend a little time now just sitting and talking with the bears and letting them smell the coffee on your breath (they really enjoy that) or watching them destroy browse… or watching ‘Flipper’ flip the food tray around for hours, such a simple thing providing noise, taste, visual stimulation.

‘Watermelon’ continues to improve day by day. He has very soft, soulful eyes and is happy to sit and chat with you which is always nice. Poor old ‘Plug’ is still very, very angry but we are trying hard to win him over with honey-dripping fruit!

It seems as if most of the new arrivals are finding peace in being with us now and beginning to realise this is the start of very good things to come!”