In July 2025, a teddy dog abandonment in the streets of Gansulan State triggered a worldwide outcry. In the surveillance footage, two young people threw their moaning dog into the green belt four times and eventually grew. What happened to this white Teddy is a microcosm of the current abandonment of Chinese pets. • According to the 2025 White Paper on the Chinese pet industry, we add 4 million stray dogs each year, 60 per cent of which originate from abandonment by the owner. How can this species, once popular, fall from the clouds?
I. Deficiencies in liability arising from the low threshold
The promotion of “$99 package mail” has made Teddy's the most accessible “happy commodity”. Data from an electrical platform show a 47 per cent increase in the sale of Teddy dogs in the first quarter of 2025, but also a 32 per cent increase in the registration of pet discards during the same period. This low-threshold pattern of access has given rise to an aberration of the consumption of pets as toys. As in the case of the abandoned in Lanzhou, the so-called “family” becomes an object that can be abandoned at will when the fresh feeling fades.
Social media-induced false demands
3 million videos build the illusion of perfect pets under the #Tedy's day-to-day topic. However, the Psychiatry Study on Ownership revealed that 65 per cent of those who abandoned their homes acknowledged that they had been influenced by social media. The illusions are quickly dashed when the realities of the world are broken, hair shed and training difficulties follow. The head of an animal rescue station in Beijing revealed that 70 per cent of the abandoned Teddys admitted in 2025 “is different from the video”.
III. Ethical dilemmas under economic pressure
Behind the size of the pet economic market of $350 billion is a heavy burden on countless individuals. The account book of Ms. White Lord Shanghai shows that an average of $500 per month is spent on basic expenses, plus the cost of treatment for an outbreak of disease, which is more than $10,000 per year. When downward pressure is passed on to individuals, some choose to transfer medical fees to social burden. In the first quarter of 2025, the number of abandoned cases in national pet hospitals increased by 83 per cent over the same period.
Perceptions behind behavioural problems
The "riding" behaviour of the Teddy Dog, which is biologically recognized as a hierarchical instinct, is considered by 42 per cent of the owners to be "rogues". A survey by a pet hospital showed that 68 per cent of abandoned persons had not received basic rearing training, resulting in simple problems being magnified as irreconcilable contradictions. As Little Red Book Editor, Teddy's Behaviour Analysis, says: “When the master judges pets with human morality, abandonment becomes the inevitable option.”
V. EMOTIONAL SENSION RESPONSIBILITY
Under the aesthetic pressure of "a hairy child has to be refined", the hair care of a teddy dog becomes a hidden burden. A pet hairdresser revealed that professional care was required each month to maintain the curling pattern at an average annual cost of over $3,000. When the fade is inevitable, when the little princess becomes the little beggar, the love of some fades. This thinking of instrumentalizing pets turns emotional investment into purely cosmetic consumption.
Progress at the legislative level is reversing this situation. The newly amended Animal Vaccination Act of 2025 clearly provides that abandoned pets will face credit sanctions, and cities such as Beijing and Shanghai have established blacklist systems for abandoned pets. But the law is only the bottom line, and real change requires the awakening of every pet - as the story of the abandoned Teddy Mooncake finally adopted by veterinarians proves: When the responsibility goes beyond impulse, when accompanied by possession, every life finds its warmth.