Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
G-Dragon has recently come under fire as netizens have accused him of at least animal neglect regarding the two Shar Pei puppies (Gaho and Jolie) he adopted years ago.
From what I can gather, there are multiple elements to the story. First, an older controversy involving the dogs re-emerged. Years ago, both dogs were sent to his family’s pension, ostensibly to be taken care of by his parents with more room to roam cause G-Dragon was busy. But accounts from back then pointed out that the animals were neglected as visitors noticed that they are not free to roam but are put in a small caged area in the pension.
Visitors commented that the dogs looked sad or tired, but one of the main evidences of neglect was Gaho’s nails, which were not maintained.
They are pointing out that it is basic care and not doing this can cause serious issues for them. Furthermore, they say that this normally isn’t an issue if dogs are taken for regular walks as the surface wears their nails down naturally, so the conclusion is that they don’t even get adequate exercise.
It’s not just random unnamed netizens though, back in 2014, EatYourKimchi (remember them?) visited the pension and had much the same comments, adding that a cat was also chained up and seemed neglected.
Also, we saw a sad cat on a leash tied up to the garbage. He sat in a small box. Every time you walked up to him he’d hop out purring and meowing and begging for attention. I leaned over to pet him and he grabbed onto my finger and licked my hands non-stop. As soon as I tried to walk away he grabbed onto my legs and didn’t let me go, and meowed as I backed away. The cat was covered in mange, with hair falling off his ears and patches of it falling off his body as well. Why chain up a cat? I don’t get it. It’s the countryside. Let them run free. They’ll go out and get rid of any rats or bugs, and come back to you a
I vaguely remember this being an issue back then, though I guess nobody ever really held it against him at the time. Still, in the past or not, it’s difficult to defend this as at the end of the day he adopted the dogs. Especially so since he used the dogs for photo ops and in music videos, gaining a positive reputation from them.
This story has re-emerged recently as netizens believe the situation with Gaho was still unimproved.
Notably a netizen updated with an alleged statement from the pension.
I don’t know who picked up the phone. It might be G-Dragon’s dad? But anyway, he said he takes care of the dogs when I asked him who’s in charge of Gaho and Jolie. And about Gaho’s nails… He said he tried taking Gaho to the vet to get them cut. The vet said Gaho’s nails are too long and that cutting them will hurt the nerves. So that’s why Gaho’s nails have been left that way. He said Gaho is being taken care of, no matter what people say. He didn’t feel the need to respond. And he said Jolie isn’t there because she ran off when the door had been left open.
Yeah, so Gaho’s nails were neglected for long enough that they can no longer be cut without hurting the animal and Jolie is … gone? Not sure, but all of the recent updates don’t include Jolie. It’s a terrible look.
Then there’s the fact that he has new pets, specifically cats, which led to criticism from netizens.
Even rapper KittiB, who basically said she wishes people would stop treating pets as accessories.
Following all this pressure from netizens, it the pension supposedly paid for a groomer to come see Gaho.
After accusations that Gaho had been neglected by being raised outside and not being groomed despite Shar-Peis’ sensitivity to weather conditions, a netizen who called the pension that G-Dragon’s parents run revealed that Gaho had been groomed and cleaned today. The post revealed, “I called Dolce Vita and they said they called an in-house visit to trim his nails and clean his ears.” The netizen posted a photo of Gaho’s feet after he had been groomed. However, others were not impressed, commenting, “His nails had been neglected for so long that his veins and nerves grew out so much that that’s all they could cut… You can tell that Gaho has been neglected outside without even being walked regularly. Now that you got attention for this, please care for him well,” “Isn’t it so obvious that this only happened because you got negative press?“, “No doubt he’s going to post a Gaho soon and say something like, ‘Look, Gaho’s playing well’,” “It just looks like they were trying to put out an urgent fire. Please take care of Gaho“, and more.
I’m skeptical of netizen campaigns, but this almost makes it worse in a way, like they knew they got caught not giving a shit and decided to try to fix it real quick before it became a real PR problem.
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While the initial controversy is enough to be disgusted with the conditions those pets were in, I had assumed this went away because things got sorted out. If not, then that’s truly disturbing, as it’s been like six years since then, potentially all of neglect.
Fans will defend GD using the line that he hasn’t been in charge of the care for the dogs, which appears to be true, but that is part of the problem as well. He adopted them knowing he would be busy and knowing his living situation, he seemed to use them for pub and then pushed off all responsibility after they grew up. Obviously money isn’t the issue, as he could hire like 50 full-time dog watchers for them if he wanted, but it appears he just never gave the pets a second thought, and in the end that’s on him at least for the initial apparent neglect of the dogs, and potentially for the years after that issue arose as well. I just can’t see a way to pretend he can be absolved of responsibility for animals he adopted.
That said, I will wait to see if this is addressed by the pension in terms of whether the neglect continues to this day, as I feel like that isn’t conclusive yet and people are just running with the old story assuming it’s current. Of course, the pics/vids from last summer that show similar conditions of being caged, outdoors, and with long nails don’t bode well, and neither does Jolie’s sudden absence. I mean, sure, it can happen, but being accused of neglecting animals and then revealing that you “lost” one of them wouldn’t great optics at the very least. Hopefully that’s not the case, and hopefully the story is just about old neglect and it comes out they’ve been treated better since, because the alternative is depressing.
