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A man in Kuala Lumpur has retracted his confession to killing and eating his pet dog.

The man's claim had been widely reported on after a woman, who gave him the dog two years ago, filmed their confrontation and put it up online.

He has since claimed that he had given the confession in jest in order to scare and deter the woman from leaving animals in the care of complete strangers.

The man, named Chen Taiyu (name in hanyu pinyin), told China Press the whole affair was a misunderstanding.

He claimed that he is a dog lover since he was a child, and that the dog is still alive.

However, it is no longer in his care, and has been taken in by some workers at a scrap metal factory.

"I have learnt my lesson. I admit to saying the wrong thing, I deserved to get scolded by others, but the dog is still alive, if anyone doesn't believe me, they can see for themselves!"

Man claims woman dropped off the puppy and left

The viral Facebook post written by the angry rescuer, which includes Chen's filmed confession, has led netizens to expose his identity and threaten to boycott the soya bean stall he runs.

According to Chen, the rescuer had suddenly appeared at his shop in January 2021 during Malaysia's Movement Control Order (MCO) and asked him if he liked dogs (the rescuer, however, said she met Chen "two years ago").

When he said yes, she unexpectedly brought out a puppy from her car.

"Saying that the dog is very obedient and clean, she put it down and quickly left without sharing any of her contact details, which caught me off guard," said Chen.

Given the situation, there was nothing else he could do but to bring the puppy home.

Dog disappeared the next day

As he already owns a dog that he has been taking care of for a year, and had no way of returning the puppy, he felt angry and perplexed.

He added that the puppy "disappeared" from his home the next day.

"I believe because the dog and I didn't spend much time together, and it was unfamiliar with the new surroundings, it disappeared the next day. About one or two weeks later, I found the dog at a nearby scrap iron factory," said Chen.

When he approached the dog at the factory for a closer look, he said the puppy also came closer to him as it might have recognised him.

As it looked like someone had been taking care of the dog, and because he did not plan to keep another dog, Chen decided not to bring it home.

Chen said he ate the dog to scare the woman

He explained that he had initially said he had eaten the puppy as he wanted to caution the woman and deter her from giving animals away to strangers again.

When she came to enquire about the dog on Aug. 4, he had casually said the dog was "gone" because he was angry at her for having left the dog with him recklessly.

The rescuer had apparently approached him a total of four times.

When she first approached him, he casually said the dog was no longer around as he was unhappy with her.

She then approached him again 10 minutes later, and asked him if the dog was dead. He agreed then.

While she left when he had customers, she returned again to ask how the puppy died, and scolded him for not taking care of it.

In a fit of anger, he blurted out that he had killed the dog.

What was caught on tape, and later uploaded to Facebook, was supposedly the woman's fourth time approaching Chen.

He claimed that amid the woman's nonstop admonishing, he said he had cooked the dog.

That night, his friends alerted him to the video that was widely shared online.

He realised that the matter had gotten serious, and called the police the next day just in case.

He also expressed his disappointment that no one had approached him to verify the story or to understand what truly happened.

In his hometown in Bentong, western Pahang, he used to own three dogs.

Having had them for more than ten years, two of them had passed away due to old age.

He brought the remaining dog to his current address.

Chen brought the China Press reporter to visit the scrap metal factory in question. According to the workers, a small dog suddenly appeared in the area about a year and a half ago.

They took the dog in and fed it. Now a fully grown dog, it will bark at strangers to alert the workers.

According to Chen, this is the same puppy that he had received from the rescuer, all grown up.

Top images by May Ccus/Facebook and China Press