The owner of a Border Collie named “Chutou” who had built up a formidable fanbase on China’s Tiktok equivalent Douyin denounced this week that thieves stole his dog and sold it to a restaurant for $27, where it was butchered and eaten.
Chutou became popular online for accompanying his owner on road trips across the vast Chinese heartland, described in Chinese media reports as a docile and friendly dog. In statements shared online, which some reports claim have since been deleted, the owner claimed that the thieves, when confronted, said that Chutou was quick to follow the strangers, making it easy for him to be stolen and eaten.
The Chinese Communist Party for years has abetted dog theft for meat consumption, particularly at the local level in rural and remote areas. Dog consumption is not a common part of Chinese culture, however, and has faced growing backlash from Chinese citizens in recent years as dog ownership as pets has become more popular. China lacks any meaningful animal rights laws that could help owners like Chutou’s, identified in reports only with the last name “Guo,” and reports indicate that he will have to prove the monetary value of his pet as property to present a viable legal case against the thieves.
According to the South China Morning Post, which translated the facts known of the story through Guo, Guo bought Chutou as a puppy in 2018 and regularly traveled with the dog, documenting his life with Chutou on Douyin. In May, Guo left Chutou with his parents as he planned a road trip to Georgia, where he apparently could not bring the dog. The dog is believed to have been stolen on May 11, when Guo’s parents noticed that he was missing. Thanks to surveillance cameras, the family identified the thieves, who confessed that they stole the dog and sold him for $27 to a restaurant. Guo tracked down the restaurant and asked employees there about Chutou, who stated that they butchered and served the dog as food.
Chutou reportedly boasted 1.5 million followers on Douyin, where his owner told the harrowing story. He is reportedly now seeking some legal redress for the situation, but is woefully unequipped for compensation given the lack of protection Chinese laws give pet owners. Notably, reports indicate that Guo recalled that, when confronting one of the thieves, he insisted that he believed Chutou to be a stray — despite boasting a collar and other obvious signs of pet status — and declared, “The dog is dead, so stop making a fuss. I did not break the law.”
Following a nationwide uproar over the theft, which is common in much of China, some reports suggested that Guo had deleted the original video of his testimony about Chutou’s fate and that he may have been pressured by the Communist Party into silence. Rumors spread on Weibo, China’s regime-censored social media platform, that the original video of Guo’s announcement that Chutou had been eaten was no longer available on Douyin.
The Twitter account “Mr. Li Is Not Your Teacher,” which regularly publishes anti-communist dissident content from China, published an update on May 31 in which it shared that Guo had published a separate video in which he had hinted at government repression. The video was reportedly published that day and titled, “Everyone Online Is Supporting Me, But Do You Know that Offline I’m Facing the Whole World Alone?” In the video, Guo reportedly demanded that people stop approaching him in person pressuring him to stop publishing online content.
“Mr. Li Not Your Teacher” also suggested reports indicate that the government has shut off to non-residents the remote village where Guo and his family live. While the reports are unconfirmed, they could suggested that the Chinese government is preventing curious out-of-towners from investigating the case or creating online content to amplify the story and the outrage surrounding it. The anonymous Twitter account also shared that commenters on the Chinese website Bilibili who claimed to live in the village reported “village cadres coming to the door to harass and apply pressure.”
The Chinese Communist Party allows the eating of dog and cat meat and has resisted worldwide pressure from animal rights activists to develop coherent and enforceable animal rights legislation. The Chutou incident comes at an inauspicious time for China’s campaign to keep dog pet theft and consumption out of headlines, as the Yulin Dog Meat and Lychee Festival approaches. Held in the eponymous city of Yulin, the festival occurs annually beginning on the summer solstice, expected to take place this year on June 21.
The festival features blocks of “wet markets” — butchers set up outside to kill and cut up lives dogs in the street — in which attendees can purchase dogs for consumption. Some vendors set up stands offering whole dogs already roasted and prepared for eating. The dogs are kept in abominable conditions and often subject to abuse before their slaughter.
The Chinese government attempted to defend the Yulin Dog Meat festival for much of the 2010s as a longstanding cultural tradition, but Chinese animal activists pushed back on this, noting that the vast majority of Chinese people do not eat dogs and, in recent decades, the rate of dog ownership for pet purposes has skyrocketed. Following a campaign featuring Western celebrities in 2016 and 2017 calling for an end to the festival, the Communist Party began spreading rumors that the festival was canceled and dog consumption was banned, neither of which are true. The Chinese government did reclassify dogs outside of “livestock” legal status, but this led to an increase in the rate of theft of pets for consumption.
Prior to the 2023 Yulin Dog Meat Festival, Humane Society International (HSI) told Breitbart News that many of the dogs eaten there will have been stolen from loving homes.
“They will most likely have been stolen from homes or snatched or poisoned on the streets, very roughly manhandled into holding cages in which they are squashed together and can hardly move, without food or water,” HSI Director of International Media Wendy Higgins explained to Breitbart News. “They will have been held for days until a sufficient number of animals is accumulated and then thrown on the back of a truck — hundreds of animals at a time — and driven for days across China to Yulin.”
A poll published by Humane World for Animals in June 2025 found that the vast majority of the residents of Yulin do not eat dogs and have no negative opinions about banning the gruesome festival. Nearly 88 percent of respondents said they “never or rarely” eat dog, and a full 88 percent said banning dog and cat meat eating would have “no impact” on their lives.