Every dog has its day, and the expression is especially true for Marig, a former stray that once prowled the streets of Lhasa but now has a name and a home.

Thanks to the Tibet autonomous region's first stray dog adoption center, which opened in late 2013, 2,000 dogs are no longer subject to hunger or danger during the chilly winter on the Tibetan Plateau.

"We saved Marig from the brink of death," said Dawa, a social worker at the center. "We brewed Tibetan medicine to cure his illness and prepared a single room for him to recover."