Killers Among Us

One aspect of Hong Kong I've never gotten used to (and never will) is how easy it is for some people to kill dogs.

The standard method is to poison meat and leave it in places dogs will find it: a tactic well-employed by the Mid-Levels Dog Poisoner, still at large in a killing spree nearing two decades in length.

I've heard of such poisonings happening in other places, such as Lamma Island and in Yuen Long's rural villages, but I never expected it to happen in our village, nor to a dog I know.

View large image Our neighbour's dog Paris is dead. Despite that our village is loaded with dogs, some bastard decided that this harmless, gregarious animal had to go. Sure, he had a couple of annoying habits, but he didn't deserve a death sentence.

Paris may not have been my dog, but I spent a fair bit of time with him anyway, from the moment he first appeared on the scene as a tiny, shivering puppy; it's easy to become attached to a defenseless creature. I took the photo in January (see thumbnail), when he was still figuring out who he was. One of his personality quirks was hanging out the space in the gate to greet people. Later, when he was larger and more coordinated, he used the gap as a doggy-door.

I knew that was going to be trouble once he'd learned that trick.

My main worry was that he'd be hit by a car, but the neighbours did nothing to discourage the habit, and short of welding bars on the gate I had no way to prevent him from coming and going as he pleased. In time he grew too big to be able to squeeze through the space, though I had to rescue him a couple of times when he got stuck halfway through the hole.

Like many village dogs he was used to roaming about: chasing birds, exploring, greeting people and other dogs, so whenever someone opened the gate he was out in a shot. He always came back; no one was worried he would run away.

Then I noticed he wasn't around each time I went out. I knew something was wrong and anticipated hearing news that he'd been run over. Given his tendency to ramble all over creation, I'd prepared for the possibility that he might meet his end that way.

But I never expected that a villager would arbitrarily end his life with such wanton cruelty. The worst part is the evil maggot will in all likelihood get away with it, because not only is killing dogs easy, most of the time there are no consequences.

In a perfect world, karmic retribution would inflict a horrible, painful disease on the scumbag who did this.

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