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While we will never fully understand why anyone would buy a living creature from a guy with a cage standing on a street corner, apparently it happens... And worse, it apparently happens enough for there to be a term for the pets that you get - "one week-ers": about how long your brand new puppy will last before it croaks out its final bark.
An investigative reporter at the Jinhua Paper (京华时报) in Beijing went to the markets to uncover what these illegal pet sellers do to create these "one week" dogs. Posing as someone who was willing to sell puppies over the internet, he came across a couple of characters who were specifically in the business of dying dogs into more desirable colors.
According to the pet-purveying street sellers, different colored dogs fetch different prices. A white poodle, for instance, would be priced at around 700RMB, a reddish coat will up that price to 1000RMB, and a “Teddy” sells for even higher - at 1500RMB. So in order to make sure all the dogs are “teddies,” they dye them.
At around 11:10am, Mr. Wei and his wife put on their gloves, which had already been dyed to a purplish color from their natural yellow, and began preparing the toothbrush, dye paste, and a pot of hot water. After, Mr. Wei entered a 10-square-meter room, I could already detect the acrid smell from within.At 12:30pm, I managed to infiltrate the premises to see what was going on. At that time, Mr. Wei's wife was working on a white poodle puppy. She used a toothbrush to color the puppy's face before lowering him into the vat of dye and hot water. Because the water temperature was very high, the little puppy kept screaming. She moved the puppy around to get all its fur wet with dye, blow dried it, and then began smoothing the color out. After the coat was dry, she began the process again. By this point, the puppy had stopped struggling.
If Mr. Wei's wife saw that the water was getting lighter, she would take out a blag bottle of dye and add more. She said "our place's chemicals are the best, one dye will last roughly a month."
Since puppies aren't made to withstand large doses of chemicals, they are usually very unhealthy by the time they get to market. To perk them up, the sellers said, they feed them cough medicine. Puppies doped up on cough medicine can stay active and playful for about ten hours before they collapse.
While this news report is from Beijing, illegal dog sellers are all over China - including in Shanghai. If you're thinking of adopting a new pet (or know of anyone who is) make sure you're going through a reputable seller. Even better, consider giving organizations like SCAA a call.
The worst thing you can do - for yourself or dogkind - is pick up a puppy from some guy selling them off the street.
Source: Netease
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for that matter don't buy any dogs from anyone who isn't already trustworthy among other dog owners. a lot of times, so i've been told by other animal care professionals, the 'breeders' skimp on vaccinations to save money. canine distemper, which is pretty much fatal and very very rare in the west, is rampant in china. my dog didn't get proper vaccinations due to a BS excuse that i bought at the time. it was a younger less informed me. a few thousand kuai in medicine and vet visits later he's still alive but likely not for long.
the fact that someone can dip a puppy in a vat of hot chemical dye and sit through the cries, over and over again, all for a few hundred rmb, pretty much baffles me. only slightly less baffling is that someone would buy a dog (or rabbit. rabbits are the rage in my town at the moment) from a street vendor and think it was even remotely a good investment of time, money or emotion (though that last one seems to be lacking more often than not).
Yeah, a local vet here said in China the distemper rate is something well over 90% in pups sold on the streets and even amongst "reputable" Tao Bao sellers...
“One can measure the greatness and the moral progress of a nation by looking at how it treats its animals”
-Mahatma Gandhi
Talk about slum dogs... sheesh!
I appreciate this info, but it's kinda extra sad (as if not already sad enough) that the take-away boils down to: Don't save animals from people abusing them, only buy animals from people who are already taking decent care of them.
What a world.
Actually, I'd think the take-away boils down to: Don't raise demand for puppies that are sold this way. If you buy it, they think they can keep doing it. Simple market economics.
If you really want to help, either call the cops on these people (Unfortunately, their inventory will usually get euthanized - but at least the shop owners will suffer massive financial damage) or... if you're feeling daring and don't mind possibly getting stabbed by a gang, steal the puppies.
OR you could support animal rights groups in China. It's not quite as easy as buying a half-dead puppy, but it's much more helpful.
Good points all. But still, I'm guessing "simple market economics" dictate far more that this kind of abuse occur than that a few ethically enlightened people can monkey wrench the market by abstaining from purchasing dyed and dying puppies. It's an ethical issue, not a pure economic issue... in fact, the "simple market economics" mindset would seem to argue that hey, if people want it, why not? Same with melamine, etc. etc.
But yeah, animal rights groups would be the way to go--education and information and public discussion to raise awareness are the only way, ultimately.
We've seen little dyed dogs being sold on the sidewalk in Nanjing - they look like they should still be inside of their mother, squinting like moles, but are covered in little polkadots. Terrible. But it's not much better on 'Animal Streets' in tourist areas like Confucius Temple, where shop owners toss rabbits around in tiny cages and cats are displayed in piles of about 30. Then there are the zoos... as stated above, the problem is widespread.
Aside from the quotable Ghandi, Kant offered a more lengthy discourse on the connection of ethics and the treatment of animals... and it was a main theme of the Philip K. Dick book on which Blade Runner was based, which, coincidentally, is frequently used to describe modern Shanghai...
Not to make light of the situation (I agree this is a horrible practice), but has anyone ever bought anything from a street vendor here that HAS lasted longer than a week? One of the first lessons you learn after moving here is "Buyer Beware" when it comes to things like this. Street vendors make their money off one-time purchases from random foot traffic, as opposed to repeat business, so they have no interest in maintaining a respectable business reputation by selling quality products.
I think the take-away should be: if you can't trust someone to sell you a legit pair of sunglasses or a handbag, why would you trust them to sell you a puppy?