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Chinese Hide Dogs to Escape Crackdown
By AUDRA ANG, AP

BEIJING (Nov. 16) – Elaine Loke is shutting down her dog boutique and will spirit her golden retrievers Hippy and Bally out of Beijing to escape the city’s sweeping anti-rabies campaign.

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Dog owners like Loke have been scrambling to hide their pets in the face of a new crackdown which allows only one dog per household and bans breeds taller than 14 inches. Fears have been fueled by graphic Internet pictures and witnesses who say police are beating to death strays and dogs that run afoul of regulations.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” said Loke, 33, who keeps the curtains in her first-floor apartment drawn to ward off prying neighbors and walks her dogs in an underground parking lot. “It’s so stressful. In the morning, I hear dogs barking and people talking outside my home and I think the police are coming.”

The pressure is so bad that Loke is returning to her native Hong Kong and closing a business she has had for two years.

In China, dogs have long been seen as a source of meat as much as companionship. But the current crackdown has touched a nerve in the rapidly modernizing capital, especially among its burgeoning middle class.

“What kind of rules are these? I don’t expect everybody to love animals. But I do want to have my rights to keep pets,” said Clare Xiao, an account manager at an advertising company. She sent her larger Brittany to a kennel run by a friend and kept her Pekinese, a stray she found on the street.

“What the government is doing is just disappointing, cold and emotionless,” said Xiao.

Many of the prohibitions have been on the books since 2003, but only sporadically enforced. The city of 13 million people has 1 million dogs, half of them unregistered, according to state media.

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A sharp increase in rabies cases nationwide has prompted the renewed vigilance. Only 3 percent of China’s dogs are vaccinated against rabies and the disease is nearly always fatal in humans once symptoms develop, though it can be warded off by a series of expensive and painful injections.

Officials have extended the 2003 rules to cover not only Beijing’s center but some outlying areas. The clampdown, announced Nov. 6, gave owners until Thursday to comply or the dogs would be seized and the owners fined.

One owner Zhu Qiao has moved three times since 2001 to find areas where her black-and-white dog, Gou Gou, could be raised safely and within the law.

“He’s part of my life, he’s my friend and family,” said Zhu, 30, a television producer. “If you want to impose a law, you have to get the opinion of dog owners and experts. You can’t just take them away.”

“I can’t move again. There’s no option but to hide him and if he gets taken, I’ll go with him.”

Another owner had his Labrador retriever taken away Wednesday because she was too big.

“She is a very amicable dog. She never barked,” said the owner, a businessman who would give only his surname Yang. “If they don’t allow me to raise her here, I will find another place. I will get her back.”

Witness accounts and photos on the Internet have shown dogs being captured in nets and pummeled with wooden and metal sticks. But authorities have vowed to carry out a “strict but civilized” campaign that police hoped would not anger dog owners, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

“I have never heard of dogs being culled after they were caught by police. Dogs are a man’s best friend and we treat them as friends, even when we have to lock them up for the sake of public security,” Xinhua quoted a Ministry of Public Security official, Bao Suixian, as saying.

Many owners have sent their dogs to kennels outside the city. Some are handing them over to friends and family.

Joyce Wang gave one of her dogs to her sister and is keeping Ding Ding, her fox terrier, close by her side. She said she had heard that the government was offering $25 to people who reported on rule-breaking dog owners.

“I’m scared and worried. Now I don’t take him outside during the day,” Wang said. “Even in the evening, we will take a detour if we see people in the compound we live in.”

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