Threat of Rabies

"We are caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, local governments charge fees for the registration of pet dogs in order to control their number and avoid the problems of sanitation and rabies. On the other, a number of residents do not register their dogs to evade the fee. As a result, the government does not know whether unregistered dogs have been vaccinated. That poses a serious threat of possible rabies." 

                              -- Threat of Rabies

The article said that there is a "total number of pet dogs is 100 million nationwide and Beijing alone had more than 534,000 registered pet dogs up to July this year. If the unregistered ones are taken into account, the figure could be more than 1 million in the capital city alone." From my personal observation, the number of unregistered pet dogs are far far beyond the estimate number. I have more than 20 friends who told me they keep pet dogs at home, and none of their dogs are registered, just to remind you, these are the students of the best universities in China, whose family are generally high educated as opposed to migrant workers or people living in the rural part of Beijing.

So how do we deal with the rabies problem?

The city police are already up their sleeves with all sorts of crimes, do we really need to create a "dog police force"?

Perhaps for the time being, the best solution is to offer free vaccination in populated neighborhoods, after all, safety comes first.