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Canine meat has long been on the menu in Vietnam. But now a growing love of the four-legged friends means that one man's pet can be another's dog sausage - quite literally as far as dog bandits are concerned.
"We never kill our own dogs for their meat. Here I'm eating in a restaurant so I don't care which dogs they killed or how," Pham Dang Tien, 53, said as he chewed contentedly on a plate of boiled dog.
Dog meat is good for health and virility, believes Mr Tien, who sees no contradiction between these monthly meat binges and owning a dog - his family have had a string of beloved pet pooches over the course of 20 years.
For many older Vietnamese, dogs are an essential part of traditional Vietnamese cuisine that can coexist with pet ownership. Those dogs that end up on the dinner table are traditionally beaten to death.
When times were hard after the Vietnam War, local authorities in big cities strictly limited pet ownership.
But as the popularity of keeping animals at home rises along with the economy and living standards, more young people feel like 16-year-old Nguyen Anh Hong.
"I just don't understand how people can eat dogs - they are lovely pets," she said.
The love affair has a dark side - growing ranks of thieves go from small town to small town in rural areas of Vietnam stealing pets to sell to dog meat restaurants.
Although the value of the thefts - dog meat fetches around six dollars per kilo - is too low to concethe Vietnamese police, the loss of a treasured pet to the cooking pot means emotions run high.
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