China's one-dog-fits-all law; Owners and Hoarders howling

... but angry pet lovers, hoarders and other crazies are choosing to ignore the policy or find ways around it.

A young Chinese man walks his dog on the streets of Guangzhou, southern China's Guangdong province, the home of Bird Flu and SARS.

Guangzhou's one-dog policy has made many pet owners angry because for decades, most Chinese residents of the southern city of Guangzhou have resigned themselves to the country's strict one-child policy.

But now, a similar restriction on the number of dogs people can have, has got them howling mad.

Raising dogs as pets was banned under the rule of late Chinese leader Mao Zedong as a decadent bourgeois pastime, but with China's growing affluence and pursuit of everything Western, greater numbers of middle-income families have become avid pet owners.

Pampered pedigree poodles and chows are a regular sight on the streets of major cities like Guangzhou and Beijing, but the boom has apparently led to a greatly increased number of stray dogs or abandoned pets.

The number of public spaces getting soiled by dog crap, has also increased, as have the complaints from neighbours who are less partial to being up close and personal with canines.

Tensions normally run high in the closely confined spaces and cramped conditions of China's crowded districts and tenement blocks but this issue is just making matters worse.

I really like the reasoned argument one woman puts up though, saying "What's the difference between one dog and two dogs?" Pretty convincing stuff. Unfortunately, she refused to expand further on this. She also refused to be named and shamed due to the extreme 'sensitivity' of the matter. She left quickly with her dogs, Barking! all of them!