The number of owners of pet animals, mostly cats and dogs, has been soaring since most cities in China removed the ban on dog-rearing in the urban area in the 1980s, after food rationing was scrapped.

And 2006, the Year of the Dog on the Chinese calendar, has already seen even more pet lovers adopting furry companions.

Having a pet is considered a new way of life, and a symbol of prosperity. Rearing pets was once looked upon as a bourgeois way of life and condemned. Very few urbanites could afford to own a dog or cat because food was rationed, and even the ration was not enough to feed the people, let alone pets.

Along with a better standard of living, some also attribute the popularity of pets to a growing sense of loneliness, which is common among city dwellers, particularly the elderly in solitude and single white-collar workers.

However, the increase in pet-rearing has also caused many social problems. More than ever before, society is facing disputes between those who own pets and those who do not, issues of responsibility and alarming incidents of abuse.

Owners who do not clean up after their pets in public are considered a nuisance to those walking on the streets. Few pet owners take the time to register their dogs or give them vaccine injections. There has been a rise in residents complaining about their normal life being greatly interrupted by neighbours' pets.

A large number of pet dogs and cats are abandoned, and reproduce even larger groups of strays.

According to statistics released by the Ministry of Health, the nation had seen an increase in rabies a fatal viral disease that can spread from animals to humans. There were 159 cases of the disease in 1996, but the number rose to 2,660 in 2004.

While pets are lovable friends to many who own them, others are ill-prepared or equipped to handle caring for an animal. The result is worsened tension with neighbours, neglected pets, or worse, abuse.

Taking pets seriously

Many social organizations advocating animal protection urge the public to make more efforts to ease the strain between pet owners and their neighbours.

Many pet owners have realized the necessity of keeping their pets on leashes, cleaning up after them in public and training them to behave when around others.

"Conflicts and hatred of companion animals can be reduced or even eliminated, if both sides show more respects and tolerance to each other," said Zhao Xu of the Association of Small Animal Protection in Beijing.

Zhang Wei, who lives in a community of the suburban Wangjing area, vaccinates her four dogs annually.

Two are Pekingeses, which they have kept for 11 years. The other two are pugs, one of which they adopted from friends.

"We already had had three dogs, when a friend didn't want to keep his pug anymore. We decided to take it. It would be much better than to let it become a stray and produce more in the wild," Zhang said.

They walk the dogs daily and tend to them lovingly, Zhang said her peaceful neighbourhood hardly ever has any conflicts over dogs.

In cases when a pet is making a mess or roaming off the leash, others will ask the owner to take control.

Part of the motivation for tending to the pets? "It is shameful to be caught," Zhang said.

She is only discontented that dogs, in need of outdoor exercises, are forbidden in parks and many public places. She said there should be special areas for walking dogs, so that neither owners nor neighbours will be disturbed.

But many people are not well prepared to take care of a dog or a cat till it dies. They buy pets for fun, then easily become bored, and get rid of them without hesitation.

Zheng Zhishan, a project co-ordinator of the Companion Animal Rescue Programme, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) Beijing Office, said that a TV programme once showed a clever Beijing-based beagle, which could buy a newspaper by itself. Afterwards, many in the audience took beagles home, without knowing the true behaviour of the dog.

As soon as they found that beagles less than 1-year-old are physically destructive, many abandoned their dogs.

The authorities have also taken positive steps to regulate the practice of pet-rearing. Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, in co-operation with IFAW Beijing Office, reduced the fee for dog registration and the annual examination from 5,000 (US$617) and 2,000 yuan (US$247) to 1,000 (US$123) and 500 yuan (US$62) in October 2003.

All certificated dogs will receive a free vaccine injection. Owners who have their dogs sterilized only have to pay 500 yuan for registration.

Free training courses organized by the government are on offer for dogs and owners in Beijing's Chaoyang District.

South China's Hainan Province is considering issuing the ordinance, likely the first of its kind in the country, to protect domestic animals.

There are also initiatives from members of the national committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference that the country should have a national law to prohibit abuse against domestic animals.

When neglect turns abusive

In other places, the relationship between people and pets is not as smooth as in Zhang's community.

The little city of Luoping in Southwest China's Yunnan Province is now known not for its charming environment but for the stray dogs wandering the streets.

Shenghuo Xinbao, a city newspaper of Kunming, capital of Yunnan, last month reported that some 100 stray waifs were hunted and killed when roaming the streets searching for food and shelters.

Some approve of the authority's action aimed at improving the city surroundings. But the great majority condemned the killings.

Meanwhile people are advised to be more cautious before buying a pet, so that the animals don't end up abandoned or neglected.

During the SARS outbreak in 2003, a slew of dogs and cats were abandoned by owners for fear of infection.

Since the founding of the Beijing-based Association of Small Animal Protection in 1999, Zhao and her colleagues have helped more than 2,000 stray dogs and cats find a new home.

But there are many more on the streets, and a larger number of them do not get sterilized.

Zheng from the IFAW Beijing Office said the group often receives e-mails from abroad reporting the killings of dogs in South China.

"It is really a bad image of us Chinese," said Zheng.

She said that many countries also find it difficult to regulate the practice of pet-rearing.

But it is irresponsible owners, not companion animals, who should be blamed.

The country enacted a State law relating to wildlife in March 1989, which has made more and more people aware of the need to protect wild animals.

Yet there is not a similar policy pushing for domestic animals which work on farmlands and in labs, or serve as pets.

"Take cats and dogs for example. Even many pet owners give no consideration to what their dogs and cats really need. They treat them at will.

"In this regard, there is no difference whether a cat is abused, abandoned or spoiled," said Zhao from the Association of Small Animal Protection.

In 2002, Liu Haiyang, a student from prestigious Tsinghua University burnt several black bears in Beijing Zoo with sulphuric acid, just because he wanted to see how bears would react.

Last year, Zhang Liang, a postgraduate from Fudan University in Shanghai was found having abused and abandoned over 20 cats, which he continuously adopted from other students over a period of six months.

Angry pet lovers soon bombarded the Ministry of Education with phone calls asking it to review the educational system, which fails to teach youngsters to value of living things.

In February, Wang Yu, a medical staff in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, crushed a cat's head. The photos were widely spread on the Internet and generated severe criticism.

Many disapprove of such inhuman treatments, going so far as to call out the actions in an online forum.

Other people call for the public to re-examine their attitudes toward domestic animals and the practice of pet-rearing, and pay more attention to what needs to be done to retain the harmony between humans and other creatures.

"Some do not think it a big deal, they say, ah, it is just a tiny cat, a life that hardly matters. But plenty of cases tell us that if a person abuses small animals, there is a high possibility that he or she will commit a crime," said project co-ordinator Zheng.

"The government should also think over its policy and make changes," said Zhang, the dog owner.

(China Daily 05/29/2006 page5)