Influencer's Dog Tragically Eaten After Being Mistaken for a Stray and Sold to a Restaurant for Just £19

AN INFLUENCER’S dog has been slaughtered and served up as a meal after being kidnapped and sold for £19 to a dog trader.

Adorable Border Collie Chutou, 8, was snatched by thieves in China who mistook him for a stray – despite the dog wearing a collar and tracker.

Eight-year-old Border Collie Chutou was allegedly stolen and sold off to a dog meat restaurant Credit: AsiaWire CCTV footage captured the alleged dog thieves stealing away on an electric bike Credit: AsiaWire

More than 1.5million people watched videos of Chutou and his owner Guo travel across China.

But in May, Guo went travelling alone to Georgia and left his beloved pet on his parent’s farm in the rural county of Ningling in central China.

The tragedy unfolded when Guo’s father went out with Chutou and left him guarding his car while he worked on the farm.

When the father returned on the morning of May 11, Chutou had vanished.

Dramatic CCTV footage showed a man and a woman on an electric scooter swoop past and snatch the dog off the streets.

Owner Guo immediately raced back to China from his travels and offered a reward of £550 (CNY 5,000) for his dog’s safe return.

Tragically the GPS tracker on Chutou had run out of battery and could not be used to find the animal.

Over two weeks later, on May 26, Guo managed to hunt down one of the suspects in a neighbouring village.

Border Collie Chutou, with owner Guo Credit: AsiaWire The poor animal was eaten by diners in a restaurant in China Credit: AsiaWire

The fiend confessed to selling Chutou on May 14 to a dog trader for £19 (CNY 180).

Chutou was then slaughtered that same day and served up as a meal in a restaurant specialising in dog dishes.

Devastated owner Guo could not retrieve even a shred of his pet’s body because the restaurant’s butcher had “thrown it in the trash a long time ago.”

The alleged thief reportedly told Guo: “The dog is dead, so stop making such a fuss. I haven’t broken the law.”

In the Henan province of China – where the dog was stolen and sold – a theft can only be reported if the value of the stolen goods is more than £220 (CNY 2000).

Lawyers on the case report that a purebred merle Border Collie could be worth an estimated £1,100 (CNY 10,000).

But Guo admitted he bought the dog for just £220 (CNY 2000) in 2018.

There are no Chinese laws against animal abuse so Chutou’s death is being treated as a theft, rather than a kidnapping and killing.

There is also no nationwide ban on eating dog meat in China, though some cities like Shenzhen and Zhuhai have outlawed the practice.