Officials in China have launched a crackdown on stray, unregistered, and “oversized” dogs.
But the move has been widely criticised after reports that dogs without owners are being rounded up and sometimes euthanised. It comes after a vicious attack on a two-year-old girl by a Rottweiler last week that shocked the country.
The toddler suffered a ruptured kidney, fractured ribs and lacerations across her body. She is reportedly stable.
Footage of the incident shows the child's mother initially putting herself in-between her baby and the dog, but the Rottweiler moves around the woman and snatches the child.
The mother desperately attempts to save her daughter. A cleaner and another worker rush to the scene to aid in the rescue, armed with a mop and another large stick. Eventually the Rottweiler is driven away.
Its owner has been arrested. The crackdown prompted by the mauling has however, been questioned on social media and by pet owners after several shocking stories came to light.
In one case, security guards and a landlord entered an office without the permission of the tenant and killed both of their dogs. In Liaoning Province, a university said it fired a security guard who brutally killed a dog on campus in recent days.
In another case – which has drawn considerable attention online – a small, stray dog on a university campus in Chongqing was filmed being grabbed in a net by a dog catcher, prior to being killed. The “smiling” appearance of the dog has prompted a social media hashtag using the name it was given #XiaoHuang. University officials said the dog had chased a student.
Chinese celebrities have also joined the social media discussion, saying the crackdown across the country was not warranted by the initial attack, terrible though it was. According to the 2021 China Pet Industry White Paper, there are some 40 million stray dogs in the country and this has been seen as problem for some time.
However, the Rottweiler that attacked the child in Chongzhou, Sichuan Province, was not a stray. It was unleashed and approached the mother who was walking her child to preschool inside their housing compound.
The child's family has started a campaign to raise funds from the public to pay for her treatment. Statements issued from officials in Shandong, Jiangxi and Hubei Provinces have said that captured stray dogs would be put down if an owner cannot be found for them.
Yet the city of Hohhot, in Inner Mongolia, made its own announcement saying that stray dogs would be rounded up but not killed, to calm a growing outcry against what people have been calling unwarranted cruelty against animals.
In some provinces, local governments are handing out free leashes as a way of reaching the source of the problem.
A Beijing volunteer dog rescue group posted an urgent notice to its supporters saying that dogs found without documentation in the capital would be impounded. It also told people to be mindful of designated hours for dog walking, and advised owners of medium or large dogs – who are able – to relocate them to designated boarding facilities.
The announcement also advised owners to maintain “a cooperative attitude” and not to “engage in disputes with law enforcement”.
Regulations governing pet ownership vary from one local government area to another in China and sometimes their enforcement can be lax. The country also lacks strong animal cruelty laws which might offer protection for pets.
— CutC by bbc.com
