COMMENT | Sunway Group’s backpedalling on its promise of an animal-friendly mall reveals something deeper than a corporate policy reversal.

It exposes Malaysia’s unresolved discomfort with dogs in public space; a discomfort that is selective, inconsistent, and shaped less by practicality than by anxiety, optics, and unresolved debates around religion and modern urban life.

When dogs are deployed in search-and-rescue operations, we celebrate them. We share viral videos of K9 units pulling survivors from rubble, sniffing out drugs, and locating missing persons. Dogs, in these moments, are heroes: disciplined, loyal, and indispensable.

But place the same animal on a leash in a park, a mall, or a train station, and suddenly it becomes a problem. Complaints surface. Concerns are raised. Management retreats. Policies are “reviewed.”

This contradiction is...