It has all the makings of a nightmare.

Stormtroopers invade neighborhood after neighborhood, making noise in the night, luring family pets to bark, alerting their owners to potential danger. Except that the only danger is to the dogs themselves, who are tracked down by their bark and slaughtered in front of their horrified owners.

Tragically, it’s no Orwellian short story: it has happened in China, where 50,000 dogs have been killed in one of the world’s most outrageous over-reactions in history. Granted, China had the second-highest number of rabies deaths last year — 2,375, according to the Chinese Health Ministry — and only a 3% immunization rate among rural families.

But you can’t rid yourself of rabies by wiping out the dog population: you have to vaccinate. Dogs are far from the only animals that can contract the disease, and you can’t wipe out all wildlife, no matter how hard you try. Wild animals can get protected by food laced with the vaccine that can be left in lures. Dogs can be vaccinated even easier, and if they are indoor pets, their chances of contracting rabies are fairly remote.

Given a choice, I’m sure most residents would rather spend the money for the vaccine, or would bring their pets to be vaccinated if the government would provide it at a reduced cost. Unfortunately, the only choice families seem to have is whether they kill their own pets or whether their government comes in and does it for them. If they kill their own dog, they get a whopping 63¢ for their effort. If the government does it, they’ll club the animal to death, far from a humane treatment. (CBS and ABC both have photos showing a dog lying prone on a street as officials club it, so I am not linking to either of those sites. The NBC site I linked to above contains a link to a second story in which the same picture also appears, so be warned.)

I assume that there are no animal cruelty laws in China, because I can’t think of a more cruel way to treat an animal than to take it from a loving family and beat it to death. If there are animal cruelty laws there, the government needs to lock itself up until it comes to its senses.

There are many people who don’t “get” dog ownership. They don’t understand the bond that people form with their dogs (or cats, for that matter). Some of them, unfortunately, are parents who think that they’re better than people who aren’t parents, who know more about everything, and because they are parents, experience the greatest emotional bond one can have: the bond between parent and child. I’ll give them that last one, but not the other two. But for people who don’t have children, their relationship with their pets is similar. Not the same, of course, but as close as a childless person can get. There’s nothing wrong with that, no intent to slight parenthood implied in that sentiment. It’s just reality.

Dogs don’t hold grudges; they’re always happy to see you, whether you’ve been gone for an eight-hour workday or a ten-minute trip to the grocery store. They, unlike people, don’t put conditions on loving their owners. They aren’t petty. They don’t look for arguments. In short, they’re better than most people.

If this government ever gets some hairbrained idea about ridding itself of rabies by exterminating dogs, I’ll take my vaccinated pets and move somewhere else.

There most definitely is a better way.