Bai Lihe is not getting much sleep these days, even though her village no longer reverberates to the nocturnal sounds of 300 local dogs that were killed in a bid to combat rabies.

Instead, Bai lies awake thinking about Doudou, the dog who shared her life for the past eight years.

Doudou was out in the neighborhood a week ago and never came home, said Bai, a 55-year-old housewife from Xiayishui village, Yangxian county, Hanzhong, in northwest Shaanxi province.