“Some we love, some we hate, some we eat,” was the title of a best-selling exploration of the relationship between humans and animals, with subtitle “Why it’s so hard to think straight about animals.”
Pixel the HKFP dog. Photo: HKFP.The spectrum actually goes much wider than love, hatred and food. It includes animals as tourist attractions, animals as a mechanism for gambling, animals as laboratory subjects, and (still) animals as workers. And so on.
There is also the matter of more than one relationship coexisting. There was a touching moment in one edition of Clarkson’s Farm, in which Mr C accepted delivery of a consignment of sausages which were formerly some of his pigs. He muses on the paradox of livestock farming, that you love the animals and then send them to be killed. “Well” says the sausage delivery man happily, “now you can love them in a different way.”
There seems to be a rather similar ambiguity in the Hong Kong government’s relationship with dogs. The traditional attitude was of unmistakable disapproval; licences were issued but this was mainly a way to encourage vaccination against rabies. Public parks and public housing both excluded dogs.
Earlier in the year, this seemed to have mellowed. Restaurants which wished to do so could apply for a permit to admit dogs. This coincided with the rise of the dog stroller, a sort of pram in which your pooch could visit a mall without his paws touching the floor. I now occasionally encounter small dogs in supermarkets.
Pet dogs inside Wan Land Mori cafe in Kowloon City on July 12, 2026. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.But over the last couple of weeks, the relationship has become tricky again. Two dogs featured in horror stories: one fatally mauled two smaller dogs and the other killed the proprietor of a dog hotel.
The official response was to reiterate the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department’s safety doctrine, which is that dogs weighing more than 20 kg should be walked on a leash not more than two metres long. This seems to be based on the fallacious idea that large dogs are more belligerent than small ones (the dog which took a hunk out of me was one of those little Japanese jobs) and that short leashes give you more help than long ones (if your dog is a big puller, the solution is to wear the leash round your waist).
Meanwhile, there was much anguish online over a China dog story. This involved a dog, usually referred to as Wang Wang, being killed in an unconscionably cruel way by a group of boys, who then beat her puppies to death.
This struck a chord in Hong Kong, leading several people to put pictures and tributes in public places. This, in turn, drew the attention of the national security paranoia people, who get the collywobbles over any wave of public sentiment not approved and initiated by the government. People who had put up pictures of the deceased dog were visited. Advice was offered. This would not be a good topic for a book.
A tribute to Wang Wang the dog. File Photo: James Lee/HKFP.Animal abuse is a crime in Hong Kong and cases are followed up, albeit with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Of the corresponding situation in China, the less said the better.
Then we come to the matter of wild pigs. The situation for many years was that there were two pig-hunting teams, who would swing into action and shoot any pig which was making a nuisance of itself. Wild pigs are quite good at working out where they are not wanted so the pig-human relationship was reasonably stable.
It was then decided that having people shooting pigs for fun was a bit behind the times. The new arrangement was that erring pigs would be tranquillised and neutered. They could then be returned to the wild.
This was not a success. This should not have come as a big surprise. YouTube is infested with stories of wild pig problems from around the world. Wild pigs are resilient, intelligent and breed like rabbits.
In 2021, the policy changed again. Everyone who has written about this notes that the change came after a wild pig bit a police officer. This may have been a coincidence. Anyway, the new policy was that wild pigs should be “euthanised” (the legislature’s euphemism) or “dispatched” (the government’s) or, in words of one syllable: killed.
A wild boar. Photo: Robert Ferguson/WildCreaturesHongKong.This is not wildlife management. It is a hog holocaust. Since the new policy came in, Hong Kong’s wild pig population has been cut by more than half.
From a global point of view, the wild pig is in no danger. In many places they are regarded as a pest. In Canada they are enticed into huge traps – because, to make any headway against a wild pig population, you need to catch a whole family together. In the US, they use drones and snipers… of course. In Australia the pig population is kept in check by wild dogs and, in Louisiana, increasingly by cougars. In eastern and central Europe, they are a traditional food item and are much hunted for the pot.
Most of these places probably envy Hong Kong, but I find the new policy difficult to admire. Of course, we do not want wild pigs rooting through urban dustbins. On the other hand, I infer from a recent experiment with three models of pig-proof bins that there was previously a problem with food being inadvertently offered in litterbins.
File photo: Tom Grundy/HKFP.The winning bin model has now been installed round our way just as, it appears, the local pig population has been exterminated. We used to see wild pigs quite often. People did not try to feed or pet them and the pigs showed no interest in socialising with humans or dogs.
I had not seen a wild pig for weeks until the other night. The dog froze and stared at a bush. A pig then emerged from the bush and trotted away. It looked extremely fat. There are two possibilities. It might be the young boar we saw quite often last year, grown obese because so many competitors have been bumped off and it now has all the local rubbish collection points to itself.
The other possibility is that I got its gender wrong and it’s pregnant. I will post updates.
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