BEIJING, Jan. 22 (Xinhuanet) -- As the Lunar New Year of the Dog spring festival looms, Jin Jing, a Chongqing native working in Beijing is busy preparing a trip back to her hometown, but she has to find a nursery for her puppy dog while scrabbling for a train ticket.

    Beijing's pet hospitals are open to animal guests while their human friends are absent. One week ahead of the festival, which falls on Jan. 29, the capital city's big-name pet care centers and hospitals are booked out.

    The hospitals' daily charges are usually 30 yuan (about 3.8 U.S. dollars) for a cat and 40 yuan (some 5 U.S. dollars) for a dog. Charges for kittens and puppies are even higher.

    In addition, most of the hospitals or centers don't provide pet food and charge an extra fee for giving the pet a hot bath.

    "I have to pay, otherwise I will have to pack Mianmian (her puppy dog) with the luggage and send her on an uncomfortable train trip that takes all day," Jin said.

    Despite the expense, as the traditional spring festival draws near, China's pet care market is as busy as the railways.

    "Every day we receive calls from people trying to find a place for their pets to stay during the festival," said a vet surnamed Li in Beijing Jiale Pet Hospital, one of the city's oldest pet hospitals.

    The hospital now runs a dozen "exclusive apartments" for pet dogs and cats, comprising a bedroom and a small play space.

    Li also disclosed that hospitals make four times more profit during China's national holidays than they normally do.

    But huge pet care expenses during holidays are just the tip of the iceberg of China's growing "pet economy".

    According to statistics, Beijing alone is home to over one million dogs. If an average owner spends 200 yuan (about 25 U.S. dollars) a month on his pet, the market is worth as much as 24 million yuan (approximately 3 million U.S. dollars) a year.

    Other major, well-off Chinese cities are experiencing the same "pet craze" as the national capital Beijing. In such major cities as Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing and Wuhan, pet sales and services such as medicine, hair dressing accessories, clothes, training courses, and food are booming industries.

    Experts predict that the annual sale of pet food and necessities in the country might top 6 billion yuan (some 750 million U.S. dollars) in 2008, and the market potential for the "pet economy" in China could reach 15 billion yuan (some 1.9 billion U.S. dollars) in the coming years.

    However, compared with the well-established European Union and United States markets, China is still small in size and scale. The sale of pets and pet-related products in the United States reached 34 billion U.S. dollars in 2004, about 45 times more than the Chinese mainland market.

    Lu Di, a professor with the China Small Animal Protection Association (CSAPA), was quoted by China Times, a Beijing-based newspaper, as saying that the Chinese national capital is in short supply of professional pet lodging centers. The professor called for more investment in this field.

    China Pet and Petstuff Development and Service Center (CPSC), the first regulatory body of the country's pet and pet-related products industry, was founded by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, in a bid to boost the market and to lead the industry along a healthy development track. Enditem