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A DOG CALLED NIBBLE
A NEWS ARTICLE FROM AN ONLINE SOURCE
OVERVIEW
This news article was written by a news reporter for a New York newspaper. We will use this
article to meet similar criteria for completing your GCSE exam.
IN BRIEF, WHAT IS THE ARTICLE ABOUT?
The article is about a dog called Nibble. The breed of dog is from The Himilayan Highlands
in Tibet. This type of dog was popular in China, a country which is a neighbour to Tibet and
some would pay thousands for a great specimen. Now that the Chinese economy has slowed
and the dog is no longer in fashion, there is less demand for the dogs and a danger that some
of these beautiful creatures will be killed for their flesh, skin and fur.
YOUR TASKS
Read the article.
Discuss the article thoroughly within your class before responding to any written questions.
You will find questions after the article.
These tasks are similar to the exercise you will complete within a GCSE paper.
YOUR ALTERNATIVE
If you feel you do not relate to this particular news article, sign in to a computer and
download another, or read an article from a newspaper or a magazine. You will need to
compare ‘two’ articles for the final section anyway.
THE ARTICLE
BEIJING — There once was a time, during the frenzied heights of China’s Tibetan mastiff
craze, when a droopy-eyed slobbering giant like Nibble might have fetched $200,000 and
ended up roaming the landscaped grounds of some coal tycoon’s suburban villa.
But Tibetan mastiffs are so 2013.
Instead, earlier this year Nibble and 20 more unlucky mastiffs found themselves stuffed into
metal chicken crates and packed onto a truck with 150 other dogs. If not for a band of Beijing
animal rights activists who literally threw themselves in front of the truck, Nibble and the rest
would have ended up at a slaughterhouse in northeast China where, at roughly $5 a head, they
would have been rendered into hot pot ingredients, imitation leather and the lining for winter
gloves.
China’s boom-to-bust luxury landscape is strewn with devalued commodities like black
Audis, Omega watches, top-shelf sorghum liquor and high-rise apartments in third-tier cities.
Some are the victims of a slowing economy, while others are casualties of an official
austerity campaign that has made ostentatious consumption a red flag for anticorruption
investigators.
Then there is the Tibetan mastiff, a lumbering shepherding dog native to the Himalayan
highlands that was once the must-have accouterment for status-conscious Chinese. Four years
ago, a reddish-brown purebred named Big Splash sold for $1.6 million, according to news
reports, though cynics said the price was probably exaggerated for marketing purposes. No
reasonable buyer, self-anointed experts said at the time, would pay more than $250,000 for a
premium specimen.
These days, those mastiff breeders left in the business are suffering from overcapacity, as it
were. Buyers have largely disappeared, and prices have fallen to a fraction of their peak. The
average asking price for desirable dogs — those with lionlike manes and thick limbs — is
hovering around $2,000, though many desperate breeders are willing to go far lower.
“If I had other opportunities, I’d quit this business,” said Gombo, a veteran breeder in China’s
northwestern province of Qinghai, who like many Tibetans uses just one name. He said
keeping one of his 160-pound carnivores properly fed cost $50 to $60 a day.
“The pressure we’re under is huge,” he said.
© Reuters A man holds up his Tibetan mastiff as they
perform on stage during a dog beauty contest at an exhibition center in Shenyang, Liaoning province Since
2013, about half the 95 breeders in Tibet have gone under, according to the Tibetan Mastiff Association, and the
once-flourishing Pure Breed Mastiff Fair in Chengdu, in the southwestern province of Sichuan, has been turned
into a pet and aquarium expo.
In some ways, the cooling passion for Tibetan mastiffs reflects the fickleness of a consuming
class that adopts and discards new products with abandon. Famed for their ferocity and
traditionally associated with free-spirited Tibetan nomads, mastiffs offered their ethnic Han
Chinese owners a dose of Himalayan street cred, according to Liz Flora, editor in chief of
Jing Daily, a marketing research company in Beijing. “Fads are a huge driving force in
China’s luxury market,” she said, adding that “Han Chinese consumers have been willing to
pay a premium for anything associated with the romanticism of Tibet.”
Nomadic families have long used mastiffs as nocturnal sentries against livestock thieves and
marauding wolves. A primitive breed with a deep guttural bark, they are inured to harsh
winters and the thin oxygen of the high-altitude grasslands; like wolves, females give birth
only once a year. “They have the power to fearlessly protect possessions, human beings and
livestock from any kind of threat, and people are proud of them,” said Gombo, as a trio of
dogs in his yard, tethered to stakes, lunged madly at a group of strangers.
At the peak of the mastiff mania, some breeders pumped their studs with silicone to make
them look more powerful; in early 2013, the owner of one promising moneymaker sued a
Beijing animal clinic for $140,000 after his dog died on the operating table during face-lift
surgery. “If my dog looks better, female dog owners will pay a higher price when they want
to mate their dog with mine,” the owner told the state-run Global Times newspaper,
explaining why he had asked surgeons to alter the dog’s saggy mien.
Li Qun, a professor at Nanjing Agricultural University and an expert on Tibetan mastiffs, said
speculators were partly to blame for sabotaging what had been a healthy market. But also, as
prices spiraled upward, unscrupulous breeders began mating pure Tibetan mastiffs with other
dogs, diluting the perceived value of the breed and turning off would-be customers. “By
2013, the market was saturated with crossbreeds,” Professor Li said.
News stories about mastiffs attacking people, some fatally, also dampened ardor for the
breed. Although not inherently vicious, Tibetan mastiffs are loyal to a fault, increasing the
likelihood of attacks on strangers, experts say.
In recent years, a number of Chinese cities have banned the breed, further denting demand
and perhaps contributing to the surge in abandonments.
The rescuers who saved Nibble and the others from an ignominious fate said the conditions
of the transport were appalling. Several of the mastiffs had broken limbs, and they had not
been given food or water for three days. By the time the dogs were released from their cages
— the volunteers eventually paid the driver for their freedom — more than a third of them
were dead.
“It makes you feel so hopeless because not even the police will help, even though what these
people are doing is illegal,” said Anna Li, who runs a hedge fund when she is not organizing
guerrilla operations to stop dog-packed trucks on Chinese highways.
Animal rights activists say many of the dogs are stolen by gangs who grab pets off the street,
while some have been sold off by breeders eager to unload imperfect specimens. Judging
from their swollen teats, several of the rescued female mastiffs had been nursing when they
were cast off, said Mary Peng, the founder and chief executive of International Center for
Veterinary Services, the Beijing animal hospital that has been treating them.
During her 25 years in China, Ms. Peng has seen successive waves of dog fads, which
invariably begin with speculative breeding and end in mass abandonment. “Ten years ago, it
was German shepherds, then golden retrievers, then Dalmatians and then huskies,” she said.
“But given the crazy prices we were seeing a few years ago, I never thought I’d see a Tibetan
mastiff on the back of a meat truck.”
QUESTIONS
#
1
QUESTION
List four facts you
have, related to the
information you learn
from the article?
ANSWER
Fact 1:
Fact 2:
Fact 3:
Fact 4:
2
Write two paragraphs PARAGRAPH 1
containing your
thoughts on the news
article. Use one
“direct quote” within
either paragraph and
explain what the quote
means in your own
words.
PARAGRAPH 2
3
Extract four quotes
from the news article.
Quote A:
What does quote suggest?
Explain your point
Quote B:
What does quote suggest?
Explain your point
Quote C:
What does quote suggest?
Explain your point
Quote D:
What does quote suggest?
Explain your point
4
Write five paragraphs
to explain the language
techniques the news
reporter uses to engage
the reader?
PARAGRAPH (A) - FACTS
The writer uses facts, such as
PARAGRAPH (B) - OPINION
The writer gives their opinion by stating
PARAGRAPH (C) - STATISTICS
The writer uses statistics including
PARAGRAPH (D) – EMOTIVE LANGUAGE
An example of the writer using emotive (powerful emotion)
language is
PARAGRAPH (E) – THE RULE OF THREE
The rule of three is used in
5
Sign in to a computer
and find a news article
containing a Headline
with Photographs.
Note: It doesn’t have to
be the article about
Nibble The Dog.
WHAT I NOTICE ABOUT THE PRESENTATION OF
ARTICLE 1:
Or, look at a newspaper
or magazine article.
What do you notice
about the presentation
of the article?
Find another article.
What do you notice
about the presentation
of the article?
WHAT I NOTICE ABOUT THE PRESENTATION OF
ARTICLE 2:
Compare the two
articles and write your
thoughts. Which do you
prefer? What stands out
to you from each
article? Which article
do you prefer the
presentation of?
MY THOUGHTS COMPARING THE TWO ARTICLES:
GOOD WORK.
THE TASK YOU HAVE JUST COMPLETED IS ABOUT:



Reading
Forming thoughts and opinions about the subject you read about
Picking out points and facts and discussing them in your own way
THE MORE YOU READ AND DISCUSS YOUR OWN VIEWS AND OPINIONS, ON
ANY SUBJECT, THIS WILL ASSIST YOU IN YOUR EXAMS NOW AND
THROUGHOUT YOUR WORKING LIFE. IT’S ALL ABOUT BECOMING INTERESTED
IN THE WORLD AROUND YOU, SO CHOOSE SUBJECTS THAT APPEAL TO YOU
AND ONES YOU FEEL YOU ARE INTERESTED IN.