CHEN GUIXING Instructor at the Public Security Bureau of Haikou, Hainan Province

YIN RUIDONG Citizen of Hangzhou

Most dog owners are DINK (double income no kid) families, young people working in places other than their hometowns, old people whose children do not live with them, as well as those who want to have pets as companions for their children. It is normal nowadays to see pets live with people and the government should not discourage this phenomenon by issuing such regulations.

If dog owners are not allowed to walk their dogs during the day, will this ensure safety for the elderly who have to walk their dogs at night? If all the dog owners have to walk their dogs after 7 p.m., the streets will be full of dogs, barking at each other. More importantly, this regulation implies that when dog owners walk their dogs at night, they can leave their dogs to roam freely as there are not so many pedestrians on road. This goes against the need to raise dogs in a proper way. If dogs are only allowed to walk at night, there will be a large number of dogs on the streets at the same time. Thus, we will need a lot of police officers to keep order. However, as this is not the standard working time for government agencies, the cost required for implementing the regulations will be very high. Besides banning dogs from being walked during the day, there are a lot of other regulations To solve the conflicts between people and dogs, our focus should not be on the time frame of walking dogs, but on some of the details, such as urging dog owners to control their dogs with leashes and to clean up their dogs’ excrement. These measures, and not the limiting of dog-walking time, are the key issues to manage dogs in urban areas. Improper behavior should be rectified through education and urban management, not through the use of rigid administrative regulations. Actually people-centered measures work much better in the process of city management. The contradiction between citizens raising dogs and their disturbance to public life cannot be solved simply through regulations. This method can only lead to chaos and more social challenges. For the purpose of city management, the government agencies should be intelligent and patient enough, and focus more on serving the needs of the people.

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