Hong Kong compares miserably with New York, where a landlord cannot suddenly enforce the rule of no dog-keeping if you have openly kept a pet for three months.
Here you can have kept your dog from puppy to old age but it still has to be removed if outdated regulations demand it.
Dog owners should not have to skulk around hiding their pets in bags in order to take them out for exercise.
If pet ownership was welcomed rather than suppressed, our sense of well-being might actually be greatly improved because dogs make us happy.
In other countries, it is natural to consider a dog part of the family, but in Hong Kong a court order can demand the “no dogs allowed” clause of a deed of mutual covenant be rigidly enforced, permitting lawyers to order families to part with their dogs, even though dog keeping may have been unchallenged for years.
It makes it all the more heartbreaking when the law is removing them from a loving home. How can we as a society be expected to learn compassion when the law can be so cruel?