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Amid furore, organisers pull dog circus out of Chinese New Year show

SINGAPORE — A segment of a Chinese New Year show featuring dog performances has been withdrawn following a backlash online.

The show, which was branded as the "Chinese New Year Dog Circus 2018", was scheduled to take place at Resorts World Sentosa in February 2018 to welcome the Chinese Lunar New Year. Photo: Sistic via Facebook

The show, which was branded as the "Chinese New Year Dog Circus 2018", was scheduled to take place at Resorts World Sentosa in February 2018 to welcome the Chinese Lunar New Year. Photo: Sistic via Facebook

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SINGAPORE — A segment of a Chinese New Year show featuring dog performances has been withdrawn following a backlash online.

The show, which was branded as the “Chinese New Year Dog Circus 2018”, was scheduled to take place at Resorts World Sentosa in February 2018 to welcome the Chinese Lunar New Year.

According to the Chinese zodiac calendar, the Year of the Dog starts from Feb 16, 2018 to Feb 4, 2019.

Ticketing operator Sistic first promoted the China-based show on its Facebook page on Friday (Dec 8) morning. By Friday night, a petition to ban the show from performing in Singapore — started by animal advocate Summer Ong — was created.

The petition — addressed to the show’s promoter HE Productions, Sistic and Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) — garnered 7,237 supporters by the time it was closed on Saturday (Dec 9) afternoon.

“To be even campaigning for this is baffling because Singapore prides herself as a progressive first world nation,” Ms Ong told TODAY.

“It’s extremely disappointing to see RWS and SISTIC promoting such animal performance and animal cruelty. And we are all unsure and very appalled why RWS and Sistic gave the green light to approve this China dog circus.

“Such venue operators should never accept these shows. Accepting such acts shows they support these performances. Promoting these unethical shows thus perpetuates animal cruelty.”

Describing the practice of using animals in circus as “archaic, cruel and unethical”, the petition cited the closure of the Ringling Brothers, an American travelling circus company famous for using elephants in its performances.

The event webpage for ticket sales — which has since been taken down — said that it is the “first and only Dog Circus from China”.

The event description also said that poodles would juggle circus props and perform ring stunts, acrobatics, and other various acts.

Tickets for the show — scheduled to take place on the first two days of Chinese New Year (Feb 16 and 17), with three shows daily, each lasting around 1.5 hours — went on sale on Friday at 10am before it was cancelled. The tickets were priced from S$68 to S$108.

The event webpage for ticket sales — which has since been taken down — said that it is the "first and only Dog Circus from China". Image screengrab: Google web cache via Sistic

Mr Harry Yap from HE Productions confirmed with TODAY that the show will still go on, albeit without the segment involving the poodles.

“(The segment was cancelled) this afternoon, after a discussion with RWS. We decided to put a stop (to ticket sales) and restructure our programme,” said Mr Yap.

“We will temporarily take down (our listings) from Sistic and replan our show. We need to discuss with the performers in China and let the public understand the dogs were not ill-treated.”

Voices for Animals, a volunteer-run animal welfare group slammed the show on its Facebook page.

“Please support the right thing. If you think that you will be amazed by the number of tricks the dogs can do, imagine the amount of ‘training’ they went through,” the group wrote.

The promotional post on Sistic’s Facebook page also attracted over 360 comments condemning the move to bring the show to Singapore.

Facebook user Gwenda Lowe wrote: “Considering how animal circuses are losing favour amongst most developed nations because (1) it is cruel, and (2) most ethical and civilised people don’t find such acts entertaining, your decision to showcase a circus of such poor taste is deeply disappointing.”

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