Dogs of Chende
A couple of weeks ago I visited Chende. It was nice. It had an emperor’s summer palace and a cool little foreign teacher community that we hung out with one night. But it also had a dog market.
The dog market wasn’t really a “market,” it was just a bunch of tables and cages set up around a big parking lot. I snapped some photos of the dogs and you can see them below.
Now, I fully recognize that being sold as pets is probably the best fate a dog can have. These dogs weren’t being bred for food, or fighting, or to be vicious attack dogs. They were being sold to tourists — Chinese and foreign — visiting Chende. And I also realize that there are children in China living in worse conditions than these dogs.
But, despite all that, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for them. Check out the pictures below and let me know what you think.
User Comments
Greg Gauthier
05/16/10
I have, on occasion, wondered what it would take to run a shelter.
In New York, strays are regularly rounded up and offered for pethood by the city’s AC&C service, but they don’t have long after that. When conditions in the pounds are not busy, I believe the limit is 10 days. When they are crowded, usually the sickest or the most behaviorally difficult dogs are the first to get the needle.
The AC&C is the last stop in a brutal, hard life, for most of these dogs – primarily Dobermans, Pits, and Rottweilers – who were bred in the first place for fighting, or for vanity, and subsequently abandoned when they failed to attain the requisite cash reward or ego gratification the owner desired.
People fear the Huskies, Pits, and Rottweilers, and so, usually won’t adopt them, but truth is, the ones in the pound are often there because they were the ones that WEREN’T mean, or aggressive, or territorial (and thus, failed to qualify for the original owner).