It's a dog's life for man's best friend_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

It's a dog's life for man's best friend

Two dog-related stories appeared online on Monday, showing the two extremes of people's love and hate for the animal.

A university professor in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, spent 100,000 yuan ($13,000) to hold a funeral for his dead pet dog on Sunday. A week earlier, six men bludgeoned a dog to death before its owner's very eyes in a street in Lanzhou, Gansu Province.

Though his unconventional behavior may cause repulsion given the fact that a fair large part of the Chinese population is still poverty stricken and 100,000 yuan would be enough to put dozens of rural children through school, the professor can't be blamed for he did nothing to harm anyone.

The cold-blooded killing of a dog by six men wielding heavy cudgels, however, is something else.

In their defense, the men said they did not slay the canine without good reason. One of them said the dog, a large collie, had scared his friend's child and its owner had bullied the child's parents during the subsequent quarrel. He said he and the five other friends of the child's parent had to kill the dog because they couldn't count on the local authorities to stop it being a threat to children, even though they had reported it to the police.

I definitely disagree with the brutal slaughter of the dog but I would be speechless if the man asked me this question: "What else do you think we can do for justice to be done?"

I certainly would not say something like, "leave the matter to the government for a proper treatment", as is often suggested by media commentators. I know "proper treatment" in most cases would mean simply letting the matter drop after a suitably protracted delay. The authorities have much weightier things to attend to than trivial brawls between neighbors.