Last week a controversial video circulated of scared German Shepherd being pushed into a pool for a scene in A Dog's Purpose. Immediately PETA called for a boycott of the movie. We were all bothered by the animal being mistreated and feared that all the other animals that were a part of the production were disrespected and abused like what we've concluded from the viral video. Dennis Quaid discussed the matters on The Ellen Show and now the film's producer, Gavin Polone, is speaking out on this issue.
He states that he was also in a state of shock when he saw the movie and said it was painful to be accused of being connected to such abuse.
Unsure of what happened, Polone checked out all videos filmed that day. He says that two things are evident, "1) the dog handler tries to force the dog, for 35 to 40 seconds, into the water when, clearly, he didn't want to go in; and 2) in a separate take filmed sometime later, the dog did go into the water, on his own, and at the end, his head is sumberged for about 4 seconds. These two things are absolutely INEXCUSABLE and should NEVER have happened."
He continued to explain that during rehearsal of the scene, the dog had no problem jumping and in fact had to be held back from taking the jump. The only foreseen problem is that the dog was trained to jump from the left side of the pool and in the video it shows the dog from the right side of the pool. "That, evidently, is what caused him to be spooked. When the dog didn’t want to do the scene from the new position, they cut, though not soon enough, and then went back to the original position.' He claims the TMZ video "only shows the unfinished take of when the dog was on the right side. What is clear from viewing all the footage was that the dog was NEVER forced into the water."