Power bigger than barks and bites

"These people can feel the unconditional love of small animals. It also allows more people to see that dogs are not just family pets. There are many places where they can help humans."

The founder of what is believed to be China's first animal-assisted therapy program, dressed in a sweatshirt, pair of denims, black-frame glasses, is known by many as the "dog whisperer".

Over the past eight years Wu and his team have used therapy dogs to help more than 100,000 people and opened animal assistance projects in cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Chengdu and Shenzhen not only for vulnerable groups but also for groups under the intense pressure of work or study.

Of course those numbers are a drop in the bucket considering China's population, but they point to the fact that animal-assisted therapy is gaining a foothold in the country.

Wu's initiative gained momentum in April when Li Jiaqi, who has about 40 million followers on the Chinese internet platform TikTok, took his dog Never to train at Paw For Heal, and saw his "trouble maker" being transformed into a therapy dog.

His training sessions were made into a series of reality show style short films that received hundreds of millions of views on the internet.