It is cheaper to get dogs this way than to raise them for the table. Dog is not common Vienamese menus any more. Only some old folks, mostly northerners, desire it. For the rest of the population, Americans disapprove of eating dog and so the people have decided that it is not a good thing and “Chinese dogeater” has become an insult.Interestingly, in a country where geckos and pangolin are considered good food, Chinese are reviled as people who will eat anything.
That reminds me of a "no shit, this is true" story from my vacation in Vietnam in 1969.
I was attached to a VIP escort helicopter unit and one of the bennies of that was a small hootch sectioned off inside a larger building, complete with bunk, rudimentary table, and a rickety chair.
Every morning, before I departed, I would make my bunk, stretching my poncho liner tight across the thin mattress.
Every evening, when I came in, I would find my bed mussed up, apparently from someone standing on it and jumping on the bunk.
I got tired of it, to the point of returning to my hootch within about an hour of leaving it one morning.
To my surprise there were two VN ladies (hootch mamasans) on my bed, jumping up and down.
After much hell-raising on my part and the involvement of the chief papasan, we established that I had a large population of geckos residing above my bunk.
Every day, the two girls would go in, catch a "mess" of geckos and go about their usual business.
I gave my permission for the practice to continue, with the admonition that they would make my bunk after their "hunting" trips.
They never did significant damage to the population from what I could tell, as every night for the remainder of my stay, the "f*** you" geckos would sing me off to sleep.