A man who tried taking his 140-lb pet Labrador hiking to help it lose weight ended up having to call for help carrying it down after it quickly exhausted itself.

Pet owner Mr Gong, from Lijiang, a city in China’s Yunnan Province, has been running a guesthouse for two years.

Since the opening of this guesthouse, he has been raising a dog.

He told local media: “It’s a Labrador, and the more we eat, the fatter it gets. It usually doesn’t like to exercise.

“Usually, it just lies on the ground like a pig. It weighs 140 lbs, especially fat.”

Recently, Mr Gong and his friends arranged to go hiking, so they took the dog with them to help it lose weight.

But the plan backfired as halfway up the mountain, the chubby pup went out of breath and could not climb anymore.

Gong continued: “The altitude there is slightly higher, maybe around 3,000 metres [9,840 feet]. After we got there, we walked for more than an hour, and halfway up, it couldn’t climb anymore.

“We also tried to encourage it to keep going, but it couldn’t. Later, it foamed at the mouth, and we even tried to carry it down, but we couldn’t.”

Phone footage shared by Gong on his Douyin account, the Chinese version of TikTok, shows two men from the group struggling to carry the heavy Lab while the women laughed.

Worried that it would not be safe for everyone on the mountain after dark, Gong said they tied the dog to the mountain and went down to find two forest guards to carry it down.

He recounted: “Just when we went up the mountain, we asked a couple of forest guards for their contacts. They raise bees on the mountain.

“Originally, we said that we would have the opportunity to buy some honey from them in the future. Unexpectedly, we called them up to carry the dog.”

Describing the situation at the time, Gong said that there was another Samoyed with them on the hike.

When they were carrying the Labrador down, the Samoyed was mocking it, jumping and barking, watching it being carried down from the mountain.

Another clip shows the guards bursting out in laughter as they carried the Lab tied to a large, wooden pole.

They were greeted by the giggling group as they finally made it to their car.

According to Gong, it took more than an hour to reach the foot of the mountain in the end.

“The two guards were also laughing all the way. They probably never thought in their lives that they would go up the mountain to carry a dog and make money.”

Gong said that after going down the mountain, the dog lay down for three days and has now fully recovered.

Later, he opted for a more practical weight loss routine by taking the dog swimming.