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Nguyen Van Vinh, 50, and Tran Hoa Tam, 49, were busted selling the dogs they had stolen overnight to a local woman in the early morning on Friday.
Authorities seized nine dogs, including a dead one, with a total weight of 110 kilograms (240 pounds) from the duo. Multiple tools for stealing dogs such as metal hoops, bottles of tear gas and flashlights were also found in their possession.
Vinh and Tam claimed they had been roaming the streets of Le Thuy, Hai Lang districts and Quang Tri Town overnight in search of dogs to steal. Once a dog was snatched, they would tape its mouth and stuff it inside a sack.
In addition to the two men, authorities have also detained their buyer Le Thi Hue for purchasing stolen goods.
Dog theft is rarely treated as a criminal offense in Vietnam, unless the stolen dogs are valued more than VND2 million, less than $100.
The act is agonized by the large public in Vietnam, which is also home to a market that consumes an estimated five million dogs per year, second only to China, which eats roughly 20 million.
Many of the dogs are stolen pets sold to small, unregulated abattoirs and killed in brutal ways.
