Here some remarkable News about the Tibetan Mastiff.

Is this the world's worst zoo? Visitors' fury after staff in China try to pass off Tibetan mastiff as a lion and a mongrel as a leopard

• People's Park in Luohe, Henan province, has apologised and offered refund Chinese media accuse zoo of replacing exotic animals with common species

By BECKY EVANS

PUBLISHED: 12:41 GMT, 15 August 2013 | UPDATED: 14:30 GMT, 16 August 2013

A China zoo has been forced to apologise after it tried to pass off a dog as a lion. 

Angry visitors to the People's Park in Luohe, Henan province, complained when the 'African lion' started barking. 

Zoo staff said they had pretended the Tibetan mastiff was a lion because they could not afford the real thing, local media reported.  

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This Tibetan mastiff was kept in the African lion's cage of the People's Park in Luohe, Henan Province

Visitors said they felt defrauded by paying to see an African lion (right) and being shown a dog (left) 

The state-run Beijing Youth Daily claims the zoo commonly replaced exotic animals with common species.

Elsewhere in the zoo, visitors found a mongrel dog in the Timber wolf's cage and another pooch posing as a leopard in the big cat enclosure.

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Then in the reptile house, keepers had placed two giant sea cucumbers which they were trying to pass off as snakes.

One customer called Liu said: ''They're cheats. I paid good money to see the lion and all I got to see was a dog.

'The zoo is absolutely cheating us. I took my son there so he could hear the different sounds animals made but when we reached the cage where the African lion was supposed to be, the big animal in there started barking.

'I paid good money for the tickets and I feel defrauded.'    

This white dog (left) was being passed off as a Timber wolf (right), according to Chinese media 

Source: The Daily mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2394369/Hairy-dog-passed-Lion-China-zoo-Peoples-Park-staff-pretend-Tibetan-mastiff-African-lion.html

The dogs that cost half a million pounds.. but are sold from the back of a lorry: Cute Tibetan mastiffs are the pet of choice for China's wealthiest

• The dogs are seen as status symbols...they are fiercely loyal say owners

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

PUBLISHED: 17:39 GMT, 9 March 2013 | UPDATED: 15:33 GMT, 10 March 2013

They may look pathetic and are hardly at their best sitting in a car boot, but these Tibetan mastiffs are worth a fortune.

They are prized status symbols among wealthy Chinese and are bought and sold for up to £500,000.

The puppies were on sale in Baoding, Hebei province, south of Beijing, with rich buyers across the country sending prices soaring.

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Car boot sale:  Tibetan mastiff puppies where the dogs can be bought and sold for as much as £500,000

Status symbol: An owner walks his pets at the show with wealthy Chinese desperate for the pet

Owners say the mastiffs, descendents of dogs used for hunting by nomadic tribes in central Asia and Tibet are fiercely loyal and protective.

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Breeders still travel to the Himalayan plateau to collect young puppies, although many are unable to adjust to the low altitudes and die during the journey.

Last month, a Chinese dog owner issued a writ against an animal clinic after his £90,000 Tibetan mastiff died while undergoing a facelift to make it more attractive to breeders.

Status symbols: Tibetan mastiffs ares said to be descendents of dogs used for hunting by nomadic tribes in central Asia and Tibet. They are fiercely loyal and protective

The owner, identified only as Mr Yu, paid 1,000 yuan (£140) for his pet to have plastic surgery at a Beijing animal hospital last November.

It died on the operating table 20 minutes into treatment. Mr Yu later discovered that the dog had died of a heart attack after complications with the anesthetic.

He is now suing the hospital for 880,000 yuan (£90,000), the amount he claims to have paid for the dog which is the world's most expensive breed.

The dogs live for up to 14 years and have fewer genetic health problems than many breeds.

Waiting for a buyer, the mastiff puppies for sale. They are thought to be descended from wolves 58,000 years ago

The heaviest Tibetan Mastiff weighed in at more than 20 stone.

They are fed an organic diet of tripe, boiled fish heads, powdered egg shells, code liver oil and raw bones to help them clean their teeth.

Marco Polo supposedly encountered Tibetan Mastiffs in the 13th century, describing them as ‘tall as a donkey with a voice as powerful as that of a lion’.

There are only around 300 Tibetan Mastiffs in the UK. They can only have one litter a year.

It is thought the Tibetan Mastiff genetically diverged from the wolf 58,000 years ago.

Source: The Daily mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2290757/Not-quite-Crufts-Tibetan-mastiffs-sale-car-boot-wealthy-Chinese-pay-500-000-one.html

                 £1 million for 'world's most expensive dog'

A Red Tibetan Mastiff puppy has become the world's most expensive dog after being sold for almost £1 million.

                                                                                  £1m red Tibetan mastiff puppy 

By Malcolm Moore, Shanghai

11:59AM GMT 15 Mar 2011

Tibetan Mastiffs are huge and fierce guard dogs that have stood watch over nomad camps and monasteries on the Tibetan plateau for centuries.

They are thought to be one of the world's oldest breeds, and legend has it that both Genghis Khan and Lord Buddha kept them.

More recently, however, they have become highly-prized status symbols for China's new rich. The dogs are thought to be a pure "Chinese" breed and they are rarely found outside Tibet, giving them an exclusivity that other breeds cannot match.

Accordingly, prices have risen from around 5,000 yuan a puppy five years ago to the hundreds of thousands and even millions.

Big Splash, or "Hong Dong" in Chinese, is 11-months-old but already stands nearly three-feet-high at the shoulder and weighs more than 180lbs, according to his breeder, Lu Liang.

Source: The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8383084/1-million-for-worlds-most-expensive-dog.html

From The Times

September 11, 2009

Tibetan Mastiff is 'most expensive' dog after £352,000 sale in China

Leo Lewis, Asia Business Correspondent

A Tibetan mastiff called Yangtze River Number Two is believed to have broken the world record as the most expensive dog, having been sold to a Chinese woman for a reported four million yuan (£350,000).

In keeping with its status the dog — 18 months old and 80cm high — arrived at its new owner’s home in stupendous style. According to local reports, a motorcade of 30 cars cruised to the airport in Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi province, to take delivery of Yangtze, and a throng gathered to fête the arrival of the city’s new resident.

If the sales figure is accurate it makes Yangtze River Number Two possibly the most expensive dog ever. This year a family in Florida paid $155,000 (£90,000) for a Labrador called Lancelot Encore — a price that included the cost of cloning him from the original Lancelot.

In the days of Mao Zedong, pet dog ownership was condemned as a bourgeois folly and banned. Now nearly 150,000 dogs are registered in Shanghai alone. The Tibetan mastiff’s wealthy new owner, a Chinese website said, fell in love with it while on a visit to Qinghai province. The woman, referred to only as Mrs Wang, had been travelling to the town of Yushu with a Tibetan mastiff that she already owned with a view to mating it with the famously pure-blooded hounds of that region. While there, though, she spotted a dog known as White Root and knew immediately that she had to make it hers.

Another version of the story suggests that the woman had spent some years in the quest for the perfect Tibetan mastiff, and was satisfied that the dog she found in Yushu was it. “Gold has a price, but this Tibetan mastiff doesn’t,” the young woman is reported to have said on her return home.

Before she left Qinghai, Mrs Wang is understood to have alerted her wealthy friends to both the sum she had just paid for the dog and the timing of her arrival. Her friends, in an opulent show of solidarity, not only dispatched their Mercedes limousines to the airport but also arranged for local dog lovers to brandish welcome banners.

Reports suggest that the crowd at Xi’an airport swelled substantially as the fleet of luxury cars hove into sight: many onlookers believed, mistakenly, that they were awaiting the arrival of a human celebrity.

It is not known if Mrs Wang will be buying her dog the Amour Amour, a 52-carat diamond collar costing £1.08m

Lavish displays of spending are not rare among China’s rich. But excesses of dog ownership have already started to become a source of tension. The authorities in Shanghai are considering banning pets from many public places. In Guangzhou, which hosts next year’s Asian Games, a “one-dog policy” has been imposed on families.

Source: The Times: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6828862.ece

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