Fatalities bring Beijing crackdown on big dogs

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  July-August 2013:

BEIJING––Recent fatal dog attacks have prompted Chinese cities including Beijing,  the national capital,  to resume enforcing long-ignored laws against keeping pet dogs taller than 35 centimeters and against keeping more than one dog per household.

Crackdowns began after a man in Zunyi City,  Guizhou province,  was dismembered on his 62nd birthday by two Dogo Argentinos,  a breed combining pit bull and mastiff ancestry.  The victim was exercising on a public street.  The dogs belonged to a man who had reportedly left them without food for several days while he was out of town.

Protest against the impoundments of large dogs surfaced in Beijing about 10 days after they started,  encouraged by several online petitions,  the support of 30 members of the National People’s Congress,  and a June 28,  2013 media release from the Animals Asia Foundation. 

But the Animals Asia Foundation release was distributed the same day that national media published a photo of the remains of a six-year-old girl who was killed the previous evening by a Tibetan mastiff in a residential compound in the city of Dalian.