They do it everywhere – not just Shanghai. In the year of the tiger a few years ago I saw lots of striped pups being sold on the streets of Nanjing. I thought they had been sprayed just to make them look like tigers but in the year of the rabbit and this year, the puppies are still striped.
It doesn’t seem to have an adverse effect on them and I think they’re only ever sprayed in order to sell them. After that, the stripes wear off and they returned to being unpatterned. Can you imagine the other dogs sniffing around, looking at these sharp stripes and looking envious. How cool to be a patterned pup in Shanghai these days.
Apologies for the photo – had no proper camera available.