Dog is considered a delicacy in parts of Vietnam and China, and strays and domestic pets are being snatched in increasing numbers from Thailand’s streets before they are transported abroad.
Sompong Lertjitcharoenboon’s dog, Tao Tao, was stolen before Christmas. It was a month before Chinese New Year, when demand for dog meat rises sharply.
“We lost him after a fireworks display,” Mr Sompong said. “I thought he was just scared and would come back. We would get up in the middle of the night whenever we heard dogs barking.”
As the weeks passed, Mr Sompong and his wife came to accept that Tao Tao was not coming back.
Then Thai television broadcast pictures of a lorry laden with 800 dogs crammed into cages. The vehicle had been stopped as it attempted to cross the border into Laos.
But stopping what Capt Teerakiet calls a “billion-baht industry” is close to impossible under existing Thai law. It is illegal to steal domestic pets but not to round up stray dogs and pack them into cages. Animal cruelty is not banned, so a law is only actually broken when an attempt is made to smuggle the dogs out of Thailand.