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| The small dog was kicked down the stairs by its previous owner. |
The incident gained attention on Chinese social media when a video showing a man repeatedly kicking a puppy, causing it to roll down a flight of stairs, went viral.
The incident occurred in the steps of Dailuoding Temple, located in the Wutai Mountain area (Shanxi Province, China), where many tourists climb the 1,080 steps and perform the “three steps, one bow” ritual.
Mount Wutai is also a famous sacred site in China, attracting millions of pilgrims every year.
Many superstitious people believe the puppy is a messenger of the gods because it often follows worshippers up the mountain. Many netizens were also outraged that no tourists intervened to help the dog while it was being abused by the man, according to the South China Morning Post.
The man was identified as the puppy’s owner and attempted to bring it home in an “extreme” way. Concerned for the puppy’s safety, the owner of a veterinary hospital in Tianjin, surnamed Cui, drove 400 kilometers overnight to the mountain, climbed it twice to search for the puppy, and finally found it on November 12th.
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| The dog was adopted by a visitor. |
Cui paid a stall owner who claimed to be the dog’s owner 300 yuan ( US$42 ) to take it down the mountain. She said the dog peacefully fell asleep on the way back to Tianjin as if it sensed a safe and happy future ahead.
Initially, Cui intended to raise the dog himself, but a woman named Yueyue from Shenyang contacted him via Douyin and expressed her desire to adopt it. Yueyue recounted that when she went to Mount Wutai on November 6th, the dog followed her and her mother, and she felt as if fate had brought them together.
Yueyue went to Tianjin to pick up the dog on November 15th and named it Luoyi, promising to take good care of it.
“What is the meaning of a pilgrimage if you bully a living creature or ignore violence along the way?”, one commenter wrote on Douyin.
Another person commented, “It wasn’t just fate, but also kindness that brought Luoyi and her new owner together.”
Some individuals are also calling for the enactment of laws prohibiting animal cruelty. Currently, there is no comprehensive law covering all animal species across China. The only existing national law on animal protection is the Wildlife Protection Law, passed in 1988.
