Lost dogs’ 17km journey home goes viral in China
The group included a golden retriever, a labrador, a German shepherd and a Pekinese. A corgi named Dapang, meaning big fatty, was leading the group
Seven dogs in China went missing and later became viral after a video showed them walking more than 17km back to their village and reuniting with their owners, who had been searching for them for days.
The video, first posted on 15 March, showed the dogs walking along a highway in Changchun, the capital of Jilin province in northeast China, where night temperatures were below 0°C.
The group included a golden retriever, a labrador, a German shepherd and a Pekinese.
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A corgi named Dapang, meaning big fatty, was leading the group.
The video quickly went viral and received more than 230 million views.
A volunteer from a local stray dog rescue centre, Tong Tong, became worried after seeing the video.
She went to nearby villages, knocked on doors and posted missing dog flyers to help find them.
She was especially concerned because of the freezing weather.
Tong Tong said that on the morning of 18 March, it started snowing in Changchun.
She feared the dogs had no food or water, so she borrowed a drone and went out to search for them.
On 19 March, reports confirmed that the dogs had returned home.
Three of the dogs, including Dapang, belonged to a woman living in a nearby village.
She said she had been searching for four days and was about to give up when Dapang returned home on 18 March.
She then searched nearby villages and found the other dogs, which had been taken in by another villager.
The reason why the dogs went missing is not fully clear. Some people online feared they had been kidnapped for dog meat, which is still eaten in some parts of China.
Others thought they might have been stolen to be sold or had simply wandered off.
On 21 March, Jilin's provincial culture and tourism bureau said the dogs had wandered off on their own.
They were likely following a German shepherd that was on heat and known to go missing for a few days.
State media said the incident shows how online information can mix truth and false claims, where guesses can quickly spread as facts.
Some people online joked that the dogs' journey could be made into a film or a real-life version of Paw Patrol, a Canadian children's cartoon about rescue dogs.
One social media user wrote that watching the video made them emotional and said that dogs are forever friends of humans.
