Overview
- Surveillance footage and owner accounts say Chutou, an eight-year-old Border Collie with about 1.5 million Douyin followers, was taken from his family’s farmland on May 11 and carried away on an electric bike.
- On May 26 the owner, travel influencer Guo, located a man he accuses of taking the dog and offered 10,000 yuan for its return before being told the animal had been sold to a dog-meat restaurant and slaughtered for about 180 yuan.
- Guo reported the case to Ningling County police and vowed to pursue legal action, and local authorities have opened an investigation that they say they are treating seriously.
- Lawyers say criminal theft charges in Henan typically require proving the stolen animal’s value exceeds about 2,000 yuan and Guo says he paid just over that amount for Chutou in 2018, a factor now central to whether prosecutors will press charges.
- The case has provoked wide online anger and revived debate over China’s dog-meat trade and the lack of a national companion-animal protection law, with some cities already banned from eating dogs and cats and dogs removed from the official livestock catalogue in 2020.