14 DAY TRIAL // The “Panda Dog” craze has taken over China, as everybody in the country now wants to buy a fluffy black-and-white canine.
The animal, which really looks like a panda bear, is actually just a common Chow Chow dog, not a mix-species hybrid. So, although this might disappoint some animal lovers, I have to say that those cute little panda dogs that you can see in pet shops and on the Internet are in fact Chows that have undergone a clever cosmetic makeover.
But even so, these pooches that look like pandas are selling out in pet stores across the country.
“Ten years ago the natural instinct of a Chinese person was to eat a dog,” pet shop owner Hsin Ch'en said, according to the Daily Mirror. “Now we are like westerners and want one as a companion. The cute breeds like French bulldogs and Labradors were the favourites, but now it is the panda dog.”
Mr. Ch'en explains that with some careful grooming and coloring, any dog can be “tranformed” into a panda, and many pet owners in China are willing to pay extra to have their dogs look like giant pandas.
He assures customers that there are no chemicals or animal cruelty involved in the process of turning chows into miniature pandas, but warns that “the price of the dog does rise significantly because of the amount of grooming that goes into it.”