Odie, the Home Counties pet rescued before being turned into £30 STIR-FRY Odie rescued hours from death in cage on back of dog meat trader's lorry Intercepted in a police raid before being butchered at dog food restaurant Handed to a British-run charity which unites dogs with new owners in UK Hardy canine made incredible recovery after nearly dying from dog virus He is now living a healthy and happy life with mother and son in Sussex MailOnline investigation this week exposed horrors of the dog meat trade By Simon Parry In Hanoi, Vietnam for MailOnline He is without question one of the luckiest animals alive. Rescued hours from death in the back of a dog meat trader's lorry in the Far East, Odie is now living as a pampered pet in England's Home Counties. His incredible journey began when he was intercepted in a police raid along with dozens of other dogs crammed in tiny cages on the back of a lorry taking the animals from northern Thailand to dog food restaurants across the border in Vietnam. A MailOnline investigation last week exposed the cruelty of the unregulated dog meat trade in the Far East where pets are snatched from the street and transported in horrendous conditions before being boiled alive and eaten. In loving arms: Odie is cuddled by his new owner Lorraine Hepburn at her home in Sussex after being rescued hours from death on the back of a lorry taking him to be slaughtered in a dog food restaurant in Vietnam On death row: Odie (bottom right) was intercepted in a police raid along with dozens of other dogs crammed in tiny cages on the back of a lorry taking the animals from northern Thailand to dog food restaurants in Vietnam In one shocking confrontation, a defiant dog meat trader in Vietnam's capital Hanoi had two dogs slaughtered in front of us when we asked him where the dogs he was selling to restaurants came from. But thankfully for Odie, he was instead taken to a shelter where British-run charity the Soi Dog Foundation took pictures of the rescued dogs and posted them on their website in a desperate attempt to find adopters overseas. Emaciated and suffering from severe distemper, he was not expected to live and the animal lover who stepped forward to adopt him was told at one stage that he had died of the fatal canine virus. But Odie pulled through and within months flew to his new home with 57-year-old Lorraine Hepburn and her son in Sussex where, two years on, he is fully recovered and a much-loved pet in an environment extraordinarily different from the horrors he escaped. 'It was the look on his face that made me want to save him,' said Lorraine, recalling the first time she set eyes on a grainy image of Odie looking out at her from the other side of the world. He just looked completely terrified. 'He has the saddest and most expressive eyes you've ever seen - and that's what got to me.' Saved: Odie (centre) was taken to a shelter where British-run charity the Soi Dog Foundation took pictures of the rescued dogs and posted them on their website in a desperate attempt to find adopters overseas Emaciated: Suffering from severe distemper, Odie was not expected to live and the animal lover who stepped forward to adopt him was told at one stage that he had died of the fatal canine virus An estimated 500,000 dogs a year, many of them stolen pets, were being smuggled from Thailand to Vietnam through the porous borders of Laos at the time that Odie - named after the dog in the Garfield cartoon strips - was rescued. Hundreds of thousands of people have in the past fortnight signed a petition calling for an end to the dog meat trade in Thailand after a video appeal by celebrities including Ricky Gervais and Judi Dench. The Soi Dog Foundation began an adoption programme under which people in overseas countries can save rescued dogs. It now exports about 200 dogs a year to new homes abroad, between 50 and 100 of them to Britain. Hardy hound: Odie pulled through and within months flew to his new home with Lorraine Hepburn in Sussex where, two years on, he is fully recovered and a much-loved pet in an environment extraordinarily different from the horrors he escaped 'He has the saddest eyes you've ever seen - that's what got to me': It cost Lorraine £800 each to fly Odie (above) and second dog Faye to Britain, including the price of blood tests, but says it was worth every penny Odie was one of the first to find a new life overseas and was being kept in a government shelter where rescued dogs were dying on a daily basis because of the rampant levels of disease when Lorraine decided to adopt him in 2012. 'I sent an email to Soi Dog saying "We'll take this dog - just let us know what's involved,"' she said. But they told me he had tested positive for distemper and it looked as if he had a very slim chance of survival. At one point, they told me he had passed away and said they were really sorry. 'I said we kind of expected it and chose another dog to adopt before they came back to say Odie hadn't died after all. Two other dogs had, but Odie survived. 'It was like Sophie's Choice. We couldn't chose one and leave the other so we decided to adopt both dogs.' Simon Parry (right) confronts an employee at the dog meat shop (centre, in green shirt) about the sale of stolen family pets for food as two cages of traumatised live dogs sat nearby The dog-meat boss gets angry and pulls a yelping dog from the cage with metal tongs, beats it senseless and throws it to the floor for an employee to slit its throat It cost Lorraine £800 each to fly Odie and second dog Faye home to Britain including the price of blood tests. 'A lot of people told me that when dogs get tremors as bad as Odie they hardly ever survive,' she said. Not only did Odie survive, but his tremors are hardly there anymore. He has a slight twitch, but it's nowhere near what he had before. 'The Soi Dog Foundation told me they'd never had a dog whose tremors were so bad and when they met him at a reunion in Britain they couldn't believe it was the same dog.' Lorraine said she and other adopters were sometimes asked why they adopted dogs from overseas when there were animals in shelters in Britain in need of homes. 'The reality is that the situation of dogs in Britain is nothing like that of the dogs in Thailand,' she said. These dogs were about to be killed in the most brutal way. These dogs really didn't have much of a chance and it was a do-or-die situation for them.' Odie and Faye are happy, settled family pets and Lorraine has since adopted a third dog from Thailand and become an adoption coordinator for the Soi Dog Foundation, helping new adopters settle their pets into their new lives. 'We have a great network of adopters all willing to help each other and give advice,' she said. 'There have been a lot of people who have rallied around to help because it's a fabulous cause, it really is.' In a sickening show of defiance, an employee starts to skin the dog as the boss shouts: 'You are hurting our business' When we see the terrible pictures and videos of what happens overseas, every single one of us says: "There but for the grace of God goes my dog." 'They are such brilliant animals and that's what makes the terrible fate of so many of these other dogs so sad.' The war against the traffickers in Thailand is continuing with investigators from the Soi Dog Foundation working alongside Thai police to try to stop the brutal trade. The charity's founder John Dalley, who runs animal shelters for some 2,500 rescued dogs, said many of the animals they rescued from meat traders still had collars on and were clearly people's pets. 'Two weeks ago, this Thai woman actually saw the photo of her stolen dog on an adoption post we put online,' he said. The dog had been stolen about a year earlier. As soon as she saw the picture she jumped into her car and drove for two hours to be reunited with her pet. It was very moving. The employee then holds the desperately injured dog over a bowl as he bleeds profusely Clearly still alive, kicking its legs and yelping, the dog is then thrown into a vat of boiling water Moments later the pet is removed from the vat of boiling water and thrown into a revolving drum that strips off his fur Sickening: A butchered dog is hung up ready to be chopped up for a range of Vietnamese dishes Behind the facade, a worker stirs a vat where the dog is thrown so its fur can be removed Last week, MailOnline reporter Simon Parry confronted a dog meat trader in Vietnam over the theft and slaughter of family pets for food - then watched in horror as he had two terrified dogs butchered in front of him and thrown alive into a vat of boiling water. The callous and stomach-turning reaction of the trader in Hanoi showed how ruthlessly determined dog meat traders are to carry on with their illicit and unregulated trade, whatever the outside world may think of them. He hauled the dazed dog out of a cage and flung it onto the ground where one of his employees cut its throat with a butcher's knife over a plastic tug. As the dog kicked and struggled, blood sprayed out across the ground in front of Mr Parry's feet. The employee carried the dog, still kicking its legs, twisting and clearly alive, to a vat of boiling water 10 feet away and dropped it in. The animal was removed seconds later and put into a revolving drum which stripped off its loosened fur. Watching their own get slaughtered in front of their eyes: The dogs wait in cages to be butchered As Mr Parry watched in stunned silence, the meat trader hauled a second dog howling and squealing in fear and pain out of the cage by the neck and repeated the process, delivering a single club to the head before throwing it to ground to have its throat cut. Why did you do that in front of us? Mr Parry tried to ask as he strode past. He made no reply and gestured at us to leave as his employees washed the skinless corpses of the two slaughtered dogs in front of the cage while the other terrified dogs looked on. An estimated five million dogs a year - many of them stolen family pets - are eaten in Vietnam with the dog restaurants of Hanoi the top location for illicitly smuggled animals. Most dogs are trucked into Hanoi from Son Dong, a village 100 miles south of the capital that is the epicentre of the country's massive dog meat industry. Here, the terrified dogs are kept for days and have food forcibly pumped into their stomachs - some suffocating in the process - to increase their weight before they are stuffed back in cages and trucked to restaurants and slaughterhouses for around two pounds a kilogram. Details of the campaign to stop the dog meat trade in Thailand are available at https://savedogs.soidog.org/petition