‘Today it’s a dog’: China pet abuser dumped after violent attack on girlfriend’s corgi, sparking fears about whom he might target next
- Girlfriend dumps boyfriend caught kicking her beloved pet corgi on surveillance camera at home
- Social media observers suggest man’s tendency for violence could put girlfriend in danger if she had let him stay
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A video of a dog in China being beaten by the boyfriend of its owner has gone viral on social media, sparking outrage in a country where pets lack legal protections from abuse.
A surveillance camera recorded an unidentified man from central China’s Henan province violently attacking his girlfriend’s corgi on July 15, according to Star Video.
In the viral video, the man is seen squatting down with his right leg stretched towards the corgi as it hides under a wash basin. He kicks the dog more than 10 times while it lets out distressed cries.
He then shouts at the dog, ordering it into the living room, and the corgi complies.
The man then follows the corgi, which is in an area of the flat not monitored by the surveillance camera.
While there is no image of what he did next, the sound of kicking, shouting and barking can be heard on the video.
The woman said she watched the surveillance footage on her smartphone soon after she left home.
According to the report, she thought it was strange that her clingy pet always stayed far away from the boyfriend whenever it saw him.
As soon as she returned home after viewing the abuse footage, she broke up with the man and told him to leave.
After the footage was shared online, the ex-boyfriend defended himself. He said the dog was a major source of tension between him and his ex-girlfriend.
“I know she loves her corgi like crazy. I can’t understand the affection, and I believe that it had a negative impact on me, making me feel that my worries would go away once the dog was gone,” he said.
The video was picked up by the media, attracting 170,000 views and 3,294 comments, many of them denouncing the man’s behaviour.
“Today it’s a dog, and when there is no dog for you to vent your anger, will you abuse women ?” one commenter said.
“Leaving the man is the right thing to do. I cannot imagine what he will do to her someday,” said another.
While China has laws to protect wildlife and livestock, it does not have any general animal cruelty laws or protections for pets, leaving many incidents of cruelty and killing to go unpunished.
Two months ago, police in eastern China detained a man who threw a Samoyed dog out of the window of a seventh-floor flat during a fight with his partner, killing the animal instantly.
A video that went viral last July showed a man abandoning a dog in the middle of a busy road in the southern province of Guangdong, sparking online debate about animal abuse and prompting police to search for the culprit.
