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Fads come and go, changing “what’s cool” every few years, sometimes even as quickly as a few months. As far as pets go, we’ve gone everywhere from ant farms and sea monkeys to pet rocks and tamagotchi. It’s also become acceptable to dress up our pets in clothing and costumes; even turning your animal another shade isn’t that unusual either.

But this next fashion that is all the rage in China right now is creating quite a panda-mic!

It might look like a baby panda, but this amazingly cute animal is actually a Chow Chow. These fluffy dogs originate from China where their name in Chinese means “puffy-lion dog”. But let’s be honest, we’ve all wanted a baby panda as a pet, and this may be the closest (and safest!) way to get one!

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Right now in Sichuan Province, there is a pet shop that sells these “panda dogs”. The pet shop owner can do this magical transformation in just about two hours. The dogs are groomed and dyed and will keep this amazingly cute appearance for about six weeks. Proud owners can come back to the same pet store to get the dye job touched up to keep their panda-stic appearance.

We weren’t entirely sure how fair it was to dye a dog’s fur like this (that said, it could be much worse!), but apparently the dye the pet shop uses is completely non-toxic, so it is entirely safe for the dogs. The maintenance of the panda-look does raise the cost of owning a dog, but there are many middle-class Chinese families who are willing to pay for the chance to walk with their panda dog out in public.

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At least no one is going to get bamboozled by these panda dogs, no one is saying they are actually pandas, unlike that time a zoo claimed a Tibetan mastiff was a lion.

Source: TOYCHAN
Images: TOYCHAN