Beijing far from being a paradise for pets

If you take a stroll near most residential areas in Beijing, you're bound to run into pint-sized dogs eagerly sniffing their surrounds on leash-free walks with their owners. Beijing might be a historic city, but the capital's love affair with pets is still relatively new. While owners might dote over their dogs, some people in the community feel uneasy about sharing limited public spaces with their furry, four-legged foes. An irate minority are even driven to murder.

The Beijing Morning Post reported Sunday that more than 40 pets including dogs, cats, hedgehogs, magpies and weasels have been fatally poisoned since August in the Senlin Dadi residential compound, Haidian district. Such incidents of mass pet murder have been hardly isolated in Beijing in recent years.

The disturbing spate of animal cruelty cases begs the question: does Beijing qualify as a pet-friendly city?

When I was little, there were hardly any dogs or cats on the streets of downtown areas. My grandfather told me that flaunting a puppy was a hallmark of the capitalist lifestyle, symbolizing the extravagant yet spiritually empty lives of the wealthy.

But such ideas began to disappear in the 1990s when urban pet ownership took off in first- and second-tier Chinese cities. People's growing livelihoods coupled with the influence of Western culture fueled the pet craze.

When I was in primary school, my father went to the local pet market and bought a Pekingese dog, a breed said to be favored by emperors during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

Xiaohua ("little follower"), as we named her, had a gold-and-white coat. She had cost my father 500 yuan ($80), more than half his monthly salary. Growing up without brothers or sisters, my time spent with Xiaohua formed some of my happiest childhood memories.

To a certain extent, the national family planning policy has fueled urban pet ownership. Not only seen as friends to children, pets also provide valuable companionship to parents whose only child has left home for study or work.

However, the boom in pet ownership has resulted in noticeable problems. Irresponsible behavior by some pet owners, such as neglecting to neuter their pets or pick up their poo in public, is met with public disdain.

The repercussions can be severe, too. Residents who consider other people's pets as a nuisance sometimes take measures into their own hands, with China's absence of animal cruelty laws allowing behavior, such as the poisoning at Senli Dadi compound, to go unpunished.

The growing problem of the city's homeless pet population, as highlighted by the Beijing Zoo's expulsion last month of stray cats, is also a major concern to the city due to diseases such animals, nearly all of which are unvaccinated, can carry.

One possible solution to the problem of pets occupying limited public space is for specialized parks, where dogs can roam leash-free without hassling other residents, to be built. Beijing reportedly has more than 1 million registered pet dogs, but few public parks are designated for dogs.

The pace of development of public areas for dogs has lagged far behind the boom in pet ownership in China, particularly when compared to the US where dog walking leisure zones have increased by one-third over the past seven years, according to Bloomberg Business Week in November. To be embrace its reputation as pet-friendly city, Beijing still has a long way to go.

By Li Ying