If you have not heard about it, well it is time you do - though you should have had some echoes of it given how viral it was. The famous star-dog of an Internet personality of China (Guois the name of the guy, who with his dog notably did a lot of travel vlogs and journeys-documented-by-videos) got stolen and sold to a restaurant at a cheap price, officially because the "collectors" (thieves) thought it was a "stray".
Now Guo is in a judiciary battle against the ones who stole his dog and the restaurant that killed it. And he can make it of a case but just barely - because dogs in China are still under the law as "goods" or "belongings", not actual living beings, meaning usually things like dog-stealing or dog-murder are not treated as "serious" business. Guo can only go that far because, listen to this, the authorities deemed that the monetary worth of his dog is enough to take more serious legal actions. Had his dog not been "worth" much he couldn't have done anything...
Anyway, this case which has moved the Chinese Internet is also sparking again the debate about the consumption of dog meat in various countries, and it is definitively a big debate that needs to be there again. But it is one of those subjects a lot of culture and governments just want to sweep under a rug, or put a lid of silence onto.
