Leo Mendoza’s Shindogs Air: Keeping Pets with Their People
Written by Sarah Pittman.
If you have spent any time in one of the many Facebook groups dedicated to living as a foreigner in Korea, you are sure to have seen either Leo Mendoza or Shindogs Air being recommended to other people online. Being a dog owner myself, and looking to move back to the US soon, the first person I thought of to contact was Leo because of how highly he is recommended in the online community.
Leo Mendoza’s story starts off like that of many of us in that he came to Korea for a teaching job. He and his wife fell in love over their mutual love for animals. Leo decided to settle down in Korea when he and his wife began rescuing and re-homing pets in 2008. There were a lot of people that wanted to adopt the dogs that Leo and his wife rescued, which led to them opening an animal shelter in Busan. Unfortunately, due to rising business costs associated with renting land in Korea, they had to close the shelter. They still rescue, but now they do it in the extra space of their home, and with help from foster volunteers. It is on a much smaller scale than before, but they hope to someday be able to afford buying their own land to re-start the shelter in the future.
Shindogs Air was a natural expansion to running the shelter for Leo and his wife because, over the years, they noticed how much other pet shipping companies had marked up the actual costs of flying pets overseas. The main objective of Shindogs Air, Leo said, is “to earn a living from doing what we love – working with pets – and being able to send rescues anywhere without fear of losing the adoption because of inflated costs.”
Leo and his wife provide a much-needed service by giving pet owners options. Leo said that there are so many people that have abandoned pets in Korea because many other pet shippers would quote them ridiculously high prices. Shindogs Air aims to help people move their pets when they need to send them, even if that means not using a pet shipper!
When I asked Leo what he would suggest for pet owners to do before coming to him, he said to “research your destinations requirements early and double-check them. So many people leave planning for their pet until the last minute, or get outdated information from acquaintances. Then when the time comes to ship, they get caught without having done the proper preparation.”
My favorite answer that Leo gave me was to the question “Looking back, what would you say is your best rescue story?” He said, “Honestly, for me, the best rescue is always the next one I’m planning to do. Rescuing is a never-ending revolving door, and if you are doing it for the passion of saving pets that are in danger, the moment we send out that pet to its forever home, we move on to the next one that needs our help. It is a feeling of restlessness, where you feel that the task is never truly completed. Many of our animals have gone on to have beautiful lives all across the world, but all we can see are the ones that need us next.”
The Author
Sarah Pittman is an English teacher with a degree in psychology from California State University, Fullerton. She discovered her love for photography while working at Disneyland and has been honing her craft with practice and YouTube videos ever since.