One dog found dead, four others starving in heartbreaking cruelty case

Screenshot/Youtube
Screenshot/Youtube

Hong Kong police are looking for the owner of five dogs and his ex-girlfriend in an animal cruelty investigation, after one of the dogs was found dead and another four starving in the wee hours of this morning.

Animal rescue inspectors from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) came upon the scene in a container house that the man rented in Lau Fau Shan in the New Territories, a little after midnight, according to Apple Daily. Outside, they found the body of a Tibetan mastiff, suspected of having died at least two weeks ago. The dog, whose body had already begun to decompose, appeared to have been chained up.

Sources told Coconuts HK that four other dogs — a Tibetan mastiff, an English bulldog, a mongrel and a shar pei — were found, skinny, with matted fur and fleas.

“There was water, but no food,” an animal welfare volunteer told HK ON TV. “The floor was covered in dog feces.”

Workers from the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department took one of the dogs, and SCPA took the three others back to their facilities in Wan Chai.

The case came to light after the owner’s ex-girlfriend, who occasionally visited the dogs, saw on July 11 that one of the dogs had died, and sent a photo to a friend of the landlord last night. The friend immediately called HK Paws Guardian, an animal welfare organization, and reported the situation to police.

Apple Daily reported that the dog owner hasn’t paid rent since he and his ex-girlfriend broke up two months ago.

Under Hong Kong law, abandoning an animal without reasonable excuse is punishable by up to HK$10,000 and six months’ imprisonment.

But critics have long alleged that animal welfare laws are weak, and rarely result in prosecutions.The SCPA investigated over 800 cases of animal cruelty between April 2016 and March 2017. A February SCMP report found that there have been exactly zero prosecutions for animal abandonment in the past three years. Hopefully this situation changes that.



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