Citizen wardens to ease pet woes

Community dog specialists are going to be recruited in Beijing, as part of a government plan to solve the dog menace in the city by involving more citizens in the process.

"The government used to be solely responsible for controlling and managing dogs. Now we would like the communities to get involved in dealing with dogs and dog owners," said Yu Hongyuan, deputy director of the Beijing municipal public security bureau, as quoted by Beijing Daily yesterday.

The new community recruits will work closely with the public. Their duties would include making uninformed dog owners more aware of the statutory control measures, tell them about the existing laws and how to avoid bad behaviors and how best to toilet train their pets, besides helping to facilitate training programs for dogs, said the dog management office from the bureau.