Final Ruling Orders Viral Dog Trainer to Apologize for Cyberbullying a Grieving Dog Owner
A Shandong court's final verdict orders Douyin dog-training influencer Pan Hong to pin an apology to the owner of Xiaobao — a Samoyed who died at his base — and pay 11,119 yuan, after his remarks sent fans to harass her; he has paid, but still refuses to apologise.
The final ruling came down this week from the Intermediate People's Court of Jinan: Pan Hong, one of China's best-known dog-training influencers, must publish an apology pinned to the top of his Douyin account and pay 11,119 yuan in damages and costs to the owner of a Samoyed named Xiaobao, who died at his training facility. As of Saturday, he had paid in full — and still not apologized.
The case began in November 2024, when a woman surnamed Li sent her Samoyed, Xiaobao, to Pan's training base after the dog bit a person. Pan, whose account Pan Hong Loves Playing with Dogs (潘宏爱玩狗) films his methods for an audience in the millions, put Xiaobao in his videos, and the dog became one of his stars. Two months later, Xiaobao was killed by a large dog inside the base.
What turned a kennel accident into a courtroom drama was what Pan said next. In a voice message to his fan group, according to Li's account of it and the court's later findings, he told followers that she had gone silent, abandoned the dog and cashed in on the sympathy: she had put up one post saying Xiaobao was gone, that she did not want the dog any more — "she wants traffic" (要流量了), he said, calling her "too ugly" a person. His fans took the hint. Private messages and public posts poured abuse on a grieving owner whose dog his own videos had made famous, and her life came apart at the seams. In February 2025 she sued for defamation, asking for a public apology and a deliberately symbolic 119 yuan in mental damages. Her account of the case was reported by Cover News in a post that has drawn more than 24,000 likes since the verdict.
The court was not persuaded by Pan's main defence — that the account broadcasting the remarks was not his. When judges had the account's real-name registration records pulled up in the courtroom, the argument collapsed on the spot. In the end, the court found, Pan's statements had "no basic factual basis", carried obvious personal insult, and set off the pile-on that followed; it awarded Li the compensation and ordered the pinned apology.
The ruling matters for the mechanics it spells out. Apology and payment are two independent obligations, as one legal commentary put it: settling the money does not discharge the duty to apologise, and a refusal to apologise can be enforced by law. It also lands squarely in a debate China has been having about influencer accountability — whether a creator who winds up an army of followers can disclaim what that army does next. The case trended onto Baidu's hot board this week as a simple verdict line: the dog trainer lost at final instance.
What has not ended is the compliance. Xiaobao's owner has the money; the top of Pan's account, where the apology is supposed to sit, still looks as it always did — back to its normal run of training videos. Whether a court can pin an apology to an influencer's feed against his will is now the question this case leaves open.