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They're more important to me.

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.LT

They're... they're here, to a human being in my eyes.

That's how pure they are.

Here.

There's nothing fantastic about a human being.

We hurt each other, we lie to each other,

we steal from each other, we kill each other.

Tell me what a dog does.

They love you.

They... they are loyal to you.

They never leave you.

They don't want anything from you.

Can't say the same thing about human beings.

As a country, we love dogs.

Yeah, 180 pounds, nothing but love.

- Oh, my God... - Dogs are children.

They're part of the family.

There's a growing market when it comes to

pet clothing and accessories.

Oh, he's famous!

A facelift for dogs.

You might think of dogs as sort of occupying

now a border species between animal and human.

What? Seriously?

Pets are family.

The law needs to recognize that.

♪ Give it up to me, baby ♪

It is civil rights violations.

Instead of on people, it's on...

Can you ing believe this?

Their pets.

The dog has a lawyer.

Justice will be served!

Our relationship with animals offered this window...

That's like raw, that's raw.

Into the human heart and the human mind

- that's just... - Absolute...

stunningly...

- Bite, bite, bite, bite, bite! - Intense.

I communicate to them like an energy, like a soul.

I call it the Me Too movement for dogs.

- Well... - We fetishize these animals.

That's my little boy.

It's a family member.

They don't belong in this world.

It's animals perceived as legal persons.

♪ Oh, anyway ♪

Detroit, Detroit sucks.

We can have that discussion anywhere.

Detroit sucks.

Yeah, Detroit sucks.

We call it little Vietnam.

Like, how long does it take in Europe,

like after somebody gets shot, before they come get the body?

Never seen a body.

See my point?

See, so we be over here with PTSD as kids.

That's not like if you go to the gas station.

Don't take your ass to the gas station at night.

Don't do it.

Don't do it.

You want to see England again?

Don't do it.

This Babycakes right here.

Yeah, 180 pounds.

Nothing but love.

Yeah, she was going to live at least to 11 years old.

But Detroit police deemed that unnecessary.

Police claimed they were looking for someone

that supposedly ran in this yard.

The dog was chained here, um, for bathroom break.

They came in, they searched, left.

Like, the person they were looking for, they never found.

We're not spotlighted like a lot of other cities

when it come to, you know, police stuff.

Unless it's, like, violence.

Like, black-on-black violence.

CNN highlight that.

But anything else, they won't highlight it.

When I looked on the Internet, there was, like,

five other cases of dogs getting shot.

I'm like, don't nobody think that's, like, a

you know, a coincidence that

it's happening here like that?

I was frustrated at the time,

and I knew somebody could right my wrong.

So I go in my office, and I type in,

like, "United States dog lawyer."

"Michigan dog lawyer."

"Dog shot by police."

Then his name started popping up, like, five, six cases.

I'm like, search him.

The police here have run roughshod over its population,

and these dog shootings are just a part of that.

It is a reflection of civil rights violations.

Instead of on people, it's on their pets.

The vast majority of, uh, my clients,

in these kind of cases,

are living in some pretty significant poverty.

The police attitude is that they're somehow less than.

As part of that, they are more willing

to take the extreme action of shooting their dogs.

One of the defendants who I've sued more than once

as a Detroit police officer has shot 80,

at least 80 dogs.

Ha! Well, it wasn't by design or choice, I'll tell you that.

My whole career has been spent enforcing the Constitution,

limiting the power of government.

One of the really neat things about this country

is that we can take action against a government

in a court and win.

Back here is where they started...

There used to be a van right here.

I mean, it shouldn't have took them so many bullets

to kill my dogs, but it took them

like 40 shots, literally.

With assault rifles?

- Of assault rifles. - Yeah.

They shot those dogs over this fence,

in a contained area, three of them.

And you know, when I came back here,

now it's just all coming back.

I've never been back here since.

But finding all the bullets, and...

Yeah.

This is just crazy.

And it's the aftermath. I couldn't take it.

My whole life had changed.

Even now, it's just like, now, just the feeling, like,

remembering, looking at everything

and how it happened, just

it's not a good feeling.

The question I ask juries when I try these cases is,

what would you pay to not see this?

Uh, people are always surprised when they hear about,

you know, the magnitude of these settlements,

it's like, well, it's just a dog, they say.

Some people say it's just a dog.

But it's not just a dog, right?

- Not to you. - No.

- So, um... - It's family.

Well, the dog doesn't have any rights.

The owner has rights.

On the Daryll Lindsay case, we got $100,000 for a dog.

But see, there wasn't $100,000 for the dog.

You know, he's not a $100,000 dog.

It's $100,000 of pain and suffering

that flows naturally from that constitutional violation.

To put it differently,

I'm representing the property owner's interests.

And a dog is a thing that cops just can't unreasonably take.

It's weird.

That's how you know it's just not a thing.

You know what I'm saying? Like, a thing.

Like, I got a car that got... You know, I got a Corvette

that got stole, and I could care less about it.

You know, we're talking about a dog.

It's not a thing.

So on the one hand, we say that, you know,

these animals, they're our companions,

they're our children, they're all this stuff.

But under the law, they're considered property.

I'm sitting on this stool, right?

This is my property.

Is that my horse there who happens to be

taking hay that they're not supposed to be taking?

Is that my property, or is that a sentient being?

The gut reaction is,

there's something really morally wrong

about humans thinking they can own another creature.

♪ 'Cause everybody knows, everybody knows ♪

♪ Everybody, everybody knows ♪

Their life is their own, and nobody has a right to own them.

As property, you don't have rights,

and you can't go to court to enforce those rights.

So if somebody assaults you, if somebody kills you,

if somebody uses you or abuses you, you have no avenue

to stop that, or no recourse to prevent it.

Yeah, I know he's giving you sign language behind.

I can see you rolling your eyes, looking up at Hasan.

You think I'm a fucking idiot?

No, no, I didn't.

Okay, well, I only have a film crew here

filming about your boy once in a lifetime.

Hey, hey, baby.

I still have at the house. I can't.

If I leave the house, the house is going to collapse.

Oh.

Okay.

Well, the justice system in America is going to collapse.

Okay, okay, okay. Okay, got to go.

Baba, bye.

He's watched me sit here for five years, endless nights

on a computer, seeking, trying to sort it all out.

What's the saying?

It's, um, nothing compares to a mother's love.

This would be Delilah Sandalwood's ashes.

And you see Delilah, the youngie.

All of my animals, I do private cremations.

I don't want anyone else's remains.

I just want theirs.

This is Kramer's ashes, and I have a nice card

from the veterinarian.

Precious memories.

I... I open these boxes sometimes when I dust the shelf.

Makes me, lets me remember and... and reflect on the years,

all their devotion and loyalty that they gave me.

And...

I don't have anything of Diesel.

This is... this is my urn for Diesel.

I have a Red Nubby Week Week.

Rather than get a coffee can and shove a ball in it

and pretend that it's ashes of the dog

that the city murdered, I decided to use this

as... my memory, my memory of Deezy.

He was a comical boy, so smart, and he always talked back.

Every question I asked him, he said,

he always talked back.

Yeah, are you done working?

I always wanted that opportunity to cherish

a child and let them know that they're my world.

Those weren't the cards I was dealt.

Still a woman, almost 52 in November,

still pray every day to God for a baby, for that miracle.

Gotta have a man, though.

I invest into the four-legged children.

They allow me to care for something that needs me.

They need me, but I need them.

Whatever I do, I think of them first.

I know my duty as a mother.

It's a lot of work. It's hard work.

It's a lot of sleepless nights, just like human babies.

The best way that I could describe it

to someone who would say, it's just a dog.

You're paying all these legal fees.

You're crying every day.

You carry this awful guilt.

You're living with PTSD because of a dog?

Imagine your daughter or your son.

In my heart of hearts, I don't believe he's dead.

I don't have a body. I don't have a bandana.

I have nothing.

I have nothing to tell me that he's gone. Nothing.

For the rest of my life, I won't believe

he's dead unless I saw a body.

Our relationships with animals offer this window into

the human heart and the human mind that's just intense.

In our relationships with dogs, you see the best

and the worst in what... what it means to be human.

Anthrozoology is a relatively new field, and it's the study

of human-animal interactions in the broad sense.

So everything from, you know, why we love pets,

um, to how we think about the use of animals in research,

to why we eat some animals and don't eat other ones.

Our interactions with animals cover

such a spectrum of human life.

It's... you know, from... from my point of view,

it's just... it's just delicious.

Well, this is Full Moon Farm.

We're actually Full Moon Farm Incorporated,

a North Carolina nonprofit.

We are a sanctuary and rescue for wolf dogs.

All of the pens are color-coded, yellow being caution.

They could be escape risks.

They could be, um, thieves.

Red is they have a bite history.

Ho, ho, ho, ho! Easy!

They have a court history, or they're just nasty dogs.

Wolfdogs are intelligent,

opportunistic, problem-solving thinkers.

And if they had opposable thumbs,

they would probably rule the world.

And they are smarter than the people who bought them.

So, you wind up with the failure of the human-dog bond, right?

These guys are all sort of, I don't want to say victims,

but they're lucky to be living here because

what happened is someone has

a romantic fantasy about living, living with a wolf.

A lot of people buy wolf dogs as a quote-unquote ego experience.

Not everybody gets a pet for the right reason.

Right there is a perfect example.

Hi, baby.

It's all right. I promise.

That animal is 16 years old.

He spent his life on a chain.

He had no quality of life.

When I got him, he was on death's door.

That's not responsible animal ownership.

Animal control took him because he has a bite history.

He bit a vet tech. He'd been a shelter worker.

He'd bit the guy's surviving spouse.

He's never even grumbled at me.

He loves me.

Other than that, he will eat anybody.

Would we be better off not having wolf dogs at all?

In other words, if you had, -No.

- In the world... - It's not their fault.

It's not because they're wolf dogs.

It's because their owner never put the time into them.

If you cannot invest a good part of your heart,

your soul, and your money into a pet,

don't get one.

Have you ever had ones that were so bad

that you would have to have them put down?

If I have to put an animal down for aggression,

and I have had put two down,

both of them had brain tumors.

I want to be able to justify in my heart,

and my mind, why did I have to take

that animal's life.

I want to know why.

Well, that's a pretty extraordinary track record,

given the number of animals that you've rescued here.

There's probably been 700 through here.

700 animals, and only two of them.

- Yeah. - And both of them...

Given the fact that they're here because they had problems

that were so severe that other people could not

deal with those, that's a great record.

Yeah.

I'm not normal.

I believe in the other side.

You can call it heaven.

You can call it the bridge.

You can call it whatever the heck you want.

But when I've got an animal that's in my lap

that's crossing to the next world, I feel it,

I see it, I hear it, I sense it,

and I go with them as they cross.

And that's the only way I could do what I do.

If I didn't believe in that

or have that compassion, I couldn't do this.

- Diesel? - Yeah.

No.

Diesel is not a dangerous dog.

He was a gorgeous dog, inside and out.

He had a rough-ass life.

It took him a long time to understand

that his life was gonna be better.

For what?

For what?

It was a really warm day, so I had the screen door locked.

And Deezy liked, he always would sit

and watch the squirrels run up and down this tree.

Carolyn, the mail lady, came.

She walks up the driveway.

She walked up on the porch.

And Diesel's saying, rawr!

She slams the mailbox.

She comes, something, a bag, her hand jiggles this door.

That was game over for Diesel.

I hear, he got me, he got me.

He got the back of her ankle, her shoe.

He peed all over the... the tile here,

and ran directly to his crate.

It wasn't horrible.

I mean, there was blood there, but it didn't seem

as if it was too deep or anything like that,

so I held her leg up.

And of course, I seen a little bit of blood dripping out,

but it wasn't like, oh, my God, like,

her leg broke off.

EMS showed up, and they treated her.

She actually walked, got up, and walked to the gurney.

The police officer came, talked to Amy,

and then animal control showed up.

The animal control officer,

handed this form to Amy, and she asked what it was.

The animal control officer told Amy that the form authorizes,

uh, him to take the dog to quarantine for 10 days.

I remember that it was going to be $150, and I'm like,

oh, my God, 10 days, $150, that's $1,500

that she's going to have to pay out of pocket

for them to quarantine him.

She's very distraught and crying.

She signs the document.

There was a lot going on. I remember Amy crying.

They're taking my son, and it was very, very emotional.

And what happened next is not at all what was described

by the animal control officer.

What happened, instead of going to 10-day quarantine,

he put on the form instructions to test for rabies,

and when you test for rabies, um, they remove the head.

So she goes to court 10 days later for her hearing,

where she thinks, you know, her dog's fate's

going to be decided, and what she didn't know

was that the dog had been dead 9 days already by then.

I just kept saying, what happened to 10 days?

What happened to 10 days?

I need to talk to the judge.

Please, what happened?

He went for a quarantine.

I couldn't breathe.

I almost fell.

My knees wanted to buckle.

When a dog is going to be tested for rabies,

what happens is that dog is euthanized, the head of

the animal is removed, that head is then placed

into a FedEx box and shipped cold to

an agency in Lansing, Michigan, which is the state capital,

where the brain is then sliced into slides,

and it is tested to determine whether it has rabies.

So her dog's dead within an hour.

She was duped by an animal control officer,

which is basically a cop who deals with animal issues.

He acted as judge, jury, and executioner,

and that's just not how this place works.

I have my baton, which we can

use this as what we call a bite stick,

or you can obviously use it on people.

I have my taser, which will not go off now,

because I've taken the cartridge out.

You can either go direct and tase, or with the cartridge,

it shoots out 25 feet and will tase

both humans and dogs as well with this.

You want to be really careful where you use this

on an animal, because you can

you can really, shock and kill an animal

with this, so you have to be really careful with that.

I've worked inner city, and I know what it's like,

and it's tough.

You are overrun, and you do have a lot of dogs.

I don't know this animal control officer,

so it's not fair of me to pass judgment.

In my opinion, he wanted to rid the problem.

In the state of Connecticut, if a dog bites,

you're not euthanizing that dog,

nor is any veterinarian euthanizing that dog,

for a term of 10 days.

Euthanasia, people think, is this,

like, great thing, and it's really not.

It's a very sad situation.

He was without his owner.

He was probably scared.

I hope to God he didn't bring him in on

a catch pole, because then you're on

the end of a steel pole with a cable choking you up.

They feel every emotion, everything you've got going,

they feel that through the leash.

So the guy was probably tense.

He was probably holding him tight.

And I don't know if they did a straight stick.

Straight stick means that they take

the needle with the euthanization,

stick it right into the vein, and it goes

right through the system, right to the heart,

and it's painful for the dog.

And when you have a dog that fights it,

and then you got to go back at it a second time

and give him a second dose,

It's tough because

it's almost like a human with adrenaline.

You almost want to think that he went out peacefully.

But did he? Who knows?

Who knows?

- So, we can cut this. - Just...

Because that's like raw, that's raw.

The number one cause of mortality for dogs globally

is humans, which I think is kind of interesting

and a little disturbing.

We poison, we shoot, trap.

We kill dogs in a lot of different ways,

some of which we label "humane."

Typically, when there is human-dog conflict,

it's the dog who gets blamed and the dog who gets punished.

Biting is a natural behavior for dogs,

particularly when they're feeling threatened.

So we shouldn't be so surprised.

People don't understand or realize with canines' bites.

There's a bite and release, a bite and hold.

There's pure, unadulterated aggression, where it's bite,

bite, bite, bite, bite, and they're going for the kill.

So a one bite to the ankle, a bite and release,

that's to me reflexive and defensive.

Knowing canines as I do, if the postal worker was able

to walk away, drive away, she wasn't ripped

stem to stern, that dog didn't deserve to die.

A dog is protecting its territory, and its human.

But some people are sissies.

Hi, baby. Can I give kisses?

- Oh, yeah. - Oh, my goodness.

He's fast with the mouth.

Oh, my goodness.

You're a beautiful boy.

Oh, my gosh.

Hi. Oh, my gosh. Hi.

I'm so happy to see you, too.

I'm so happy to see you.

You're just a boy.

He's just a baby.

- Yeah, he's 10 months. - Gung-ho Sergio.

- Yes, right. - Did I just, am I bleeding?

Yep, he got you a little bit.

- Did he nick? - No, he didn't bite me.

His head hit me, that's it.

- Oh. - That's it.

It's just, he was too happy to see me.

That's why they call them alligators.

- Yeah. - Just... they do make you bleed.

He got me yesterday.

Did he?

He didn't bite me. His head got me.

He was hugging me so tight.

Yo.

Sergio's a good boy, and he's gorgeous.

Thank you.

Okay.

Assis. Assis.

No. Assis. Assis.

Assis.

And out.

Oh.

Out.

Out.

Out. Come on.

Out.

Good boy.

How's that?

Good job, Sergio.

Well, there's... I mean, it's in a professional way.

No, but you know... but you know what?

Robert, it shows the tolerance and their strong will.

Right.

Their strong desire for that ball.

Right, I mean, basically...

Life... life is ball.

We... we use it on..

Oh, yeah.

You didn't see me over there, but I had tears

rolling down my face.

It's spectacular.

He does. He reminds me of how much I loved him,

and the breed and why, because they're so fascinating.

♪ One step as I take it ♪

♪ Sweeps me away ♪

♪ Beneath and above I am ♪

♪ Bursting passion ♪

♪ A taste of this direction ♪

When I was doing the ball,

his tail was obviously wagging.

He's happy. He's doing it for the reward.

They're not mean dogs. That's the thing.

Malinois are extremely prey-driven,

and so you just take that prey drive, turn it into a game,

you give the dog a command, and he says, "Okay, I'll do it",

"but I get the ball afterwards." So it's all about the ball.

The ball is the reward. Ball is the reward.

Get loud.

Come on. Get loud.

Oh, good boy.

OPA.

You can train them to do anything you want,

and that's the beauty of them.

But these guys can be a weapon,

you know, if they're getting wrong people's hands.

So basically this is a training scenario,

and I give the command.

He runs about 300 feet.

And then bites the sleeve.

Those dogs are a hands-off dog to me.

And any time I have to deal with one,

I'll be honest with you, I do take extra precaution.

They're tough motherfucking dogs.

They're always on guard. They're always high-strung.

They get possessive of their house, of their yard.

That's why they're used for police.

That's why they're used for the military.

Those dogs need a job, want a job.

They need to work. They have that drive.

They don't belong as family dogs.

They are true working breed.

You can't train through something

that's instinctive and inherent. You can't.

You work with that instinct, and you train through it.

You don't train it away.

I mean, you can put a sleeve on in front of a Dutch Shepherd

and a Malinois that have never ever worked a sleeve before,

and they know inherently what to do.

That's what dogs are bred for.

Those type of dogs were bred for that.

You have a place of innocence

that needs to be protected,

and there's somebody that's on scene that can react

accordingly, as opposed to eight minutes away,

which is the typical law enforcement response time.

With an active shooter canine team on scene,

hopefully you're preventing it, period.

In war, you've got to believe or you've got to be all in.

A school shooter is war,

and what you need are people that are trained for that.

So I was a SEAL.

Um, I did five deployments.

Basic underwater demolition SEAL.

The toughest military training in the world.

You know, they tied our feet, tied our hands,

you know, and dumped us in the pool.

You have to find a space in your head.

You have to be relaxed. You have to be smooth to not panic.

That's me, actually, right here.

So when I got out of the Navy and I started my canine company,

little did I know that I had a puppy, Eudoris,

that had the specific drives that I wanted.

This dog was my style, okay?

I want a high level of fight.

I want a high level of hunt, and I want a high level of defense.

He was your one in a million.

Tried to breed him multiple times.

Tried to recreate him.

Never really could have.

So then that's when the Eudoris was first cloned,

approximately just over five years ago.

Eudoris!

He can't hear very well. Eudoris!

Come here, turd.

What's up, buddy? Yes.

He, you know, was the start of everything,

and now it's clones of clones and black squad, red squad,

blue squad because of that old man.

Do I see him in all the other ones?

Sure, because I look in their eyes.

I see his eyes, you know,

but there's only one, technically, of him.

He was a dog that I had while I was in the Navy,

so he was there for me in a lot of hard times.

So he's more, I'm more emotionally attached to him

than, let's say, you know, the guys that I train here

and push out.

All right, follow me, follow me.

Right now I've got 19 clones, so I've got 25 dogs.

He's trained for Kentucky's SWAT team.

Eudoris.

They're all named Eudoris because it's Eudoris.

The bloodline is Eudoris.

Um, I mean, at the end of the day,

on paper, they're products.

I mean, it's their inventory,

if that's how you want to look at them.

But yeah, I do...

It's very difficult for me to...

Um, um...

Hey, Jimmy Gi, move, step out?

Thanks.

Um, it's very difficult for me.

I think some of them, I would say, have souls, if you will.

Um, there's just something about

that one in a million dog, meaning Eudoris.

You'd be surprised how many people are

really not into the cloning of the dogs.

You'd be surprised.

There are some people that would not buy a dog that's a clone.

But if a person goes into an establishment and just starts

shooting people, innocent people, what you need is

your one in a million dog.

We're asking a lot.

I'm asking these dogs to give me

one million percent in an active shooter situation.

Now I want you to tear

the fucking face off that person and commit to that said person.

The 50 other screaming people, don't pay attention to you.

And I don't have any problems with a canine used as a canary.

I would rather have the canine than an innocent person.

Being killed, correct.

There's people that look at dogs as only tools.

And ain't no different than me going to war for somebody else.

I'm just a tool over there to make it happen.

A dog is a tool,

but I communicate to them like a fucking...

Like an energy, like a soul.

We're in this together.

If I'm sending you into this situation, I'm going with you.

Like if you look in the eyes of most of these dogs,

I don't look at them as product.

I look at them as these souls that are working for me.

We might think of dogs as sort of occupying now

a border species, but it's almost a border species

between animal and human.

You know, when people say, like, you know my...

I think of my pets as my child.

But you wouldn't castrate your child, or you wouldn't

force your dog to always stay indoors like some of

my friends do with their cats because they don't like the fact

that their cats really want to go outside and hunt.

So on the one hand, we say, you know, increasingly

animals are just like people, but on the other hand,

if that's the case, then we don't have the right

to buy them, sell them,

and inflict our desires on them.

I call that the pet keeper's paradox.

The more we think of animals as autonomous creatures,

the less rights we should have them as pets.

They do have a soul, whatever that,

I don't want to give religious connotations,

but they do have, there's something

going on in there, you know, that's not totally predictable.

They're sentient beings.

And then what we do is for our own pleasure is

we impose our moral sense on them.

And, you know, to me, that's something that I struggle with.

Let's call it what it is.

Let's don't call it guardianship.

Let's don't call it friendship.

Let's call it ownership.

I did not.

Because the form that I saw

did not have all of this congestion on it.

It was very clean.

I, you know, I don't, I can't say that.

I don't know.

I'm just saying that in that moment,

the only thing I could think of is Diesel.

The only thing I could think of is

how this boy is going to view his mom and dad.

Here we go again.

More humans that we can't, that I can't trust.

The court called the matter of civil action.

DeJonghe versus the city of Detroit.

When he arrived there, he had the animal release form

signed by the plaintiff and described what happened,

which was a pretty severe bite on the plaintiff's mail carrier,

which was the reason for his transporting the dog.

Plaintiff does admit that she signed the release form,

which does surrender her rights and her dog.

That's admitted by her.

That's shown by the exhibit with her signature.

At the bottom of this form is a paragraph.

"I am relinquishing ownership"

"of the following described animals."

"I will not be able to find out what happens to the animal"

"after I surrender them."

I would like to swear up and down

until I'm blue in the face that that's not what I signed.

And it sure as the hell is not what I was told.

Diesel left here to go to a 10 day quarantine.

Bottom line.

I think it is fair to say that my client

consented to her dog being transported for quarantine.

But that's not what happened.

What happened was the dog was taken to the euthanasia entrance

and defendant has provided a series of

instructions to euthanize this dog.

Surrender to ACO, bite case.

Needs HR, which is a deposition testimony,

should not have removed him.

Yeah, they murdered him.

And he died so fucking scared.

And it's not fair that I live my life the same way now.

I'm scared of everything.

Everything in my world is

how am I going to protect these boys?

Von Deuce and Luca.

How am I going to protect them against what happened?

These guys have lived in four walls their whole life.

My boys, they don't leave their gate.

They do not leave their backyard.

And it's not because they're bad boys.

It's because I'm screwed up.

Thanks to the city.

Thanks to them killing my dog.

Under conditions of sensory under stimulation.

If you think about humans who are incarcerated

and are kept in solitary confinement,

I mean, they actually go mad

because of the sensory deprivation

and the system gets overloaded.

I know.

Did you... did she get your adrenaline going a little?

Yeah. She always gets my adrenaline going.

This is Bella.

Her nickname is Mrs. Bitey.

She has a distrust of humans that she has maintained

for 11 years quite stubbornly.

And I respect that about her.

I think I have a distrust of humans as well.

So.

The expectation that a dog should be a certain way is,

I think, quite strong in our culture,

that dogs should be friendly,

that they should want to be petted.

I have to kind of stand between her

and approaching people and just say,

"She'd rather not be touched by you."

I call it the Me Too movement for dogs.

I'm a bioethicist.

So all day long, I'm writing about the ethics of

our relationships with and interactions with dogs.

I've been interested in the animals that we see

the most and think about the least, which are pets.

You know, one thing that I find really interesting about

human dog relationships is our expectations.

About 80% of dog owners say

their dog has a behavior problem.

So we're going to ask our dogs not to bark, not to shed,

not to roam, not to sniff butts,

not to hump.

There's this whole list of things that we find troubling.

But those are all natural dog behaviors.

People think, well, you give a dog a nice soft bed

and a bowl of kibble and veterinary care.

Isn't that all they could ever want and need?

But the one thing that you are not giving them is

the ability to be a dog.

Dogs are highly social mammals,

but it's normalized for dogs to be intensively honed.

If you say to people that their dog is captive,

they get their back up.

But if you think about it,

most dogs can't go where they want, when they want.

They have to eat when we say, what we say.

It's not so different from an animal being in a cage.

There just aren't bars that are so easy to see.

If you take in that your dog is a captive animal,

with me in relation to Bella,

it made me think, okay then, I have a responsibility to do

as much as I can to give her freedom

and make her less captive.

I've had people say sort of sarcastic comments like,

"Oh, that dog is walking you,"

as if that's a bad thing.

And I say, yes, indeed.

That's just the way I like it.

You could imagine somebody saying, well, my dog doesn't

care about walks and doesn't care about just being

in the house all day.

But I say, well, that might be true,

but I'm not sure the dog has a good life.

We're going to go to Heinz Drive and see if we can find

a spot that is quiet with no people and animals.

And we're going to attempt to walk these two horses

for the first time in their life,

in their five years of life.

Just go out, see something more than their backyard.

Lucy, this is not working here.

You have him good, Tom?

Okay, hurry.

Boys!

Luca.

Okay, Luca, something's wrong with Luca.

Shit. Oh, shit.

Oh, shit. Get the doosie.

Here, here, here.

Luca. Luca.

Chill.

And you think I could do two?

Luca. Luca.

You need to take this time and enjoy yourself, Bubba.

Act normal. We might do it more than once.

Uh.

Okay, come on. Let's walk a little while.

Want to run with him a little bit?

Yeah, just make sure that harness is not

going to slip over his elbows.

Okay.

Look at Luca.

So happy to see his bop-bops.

In his backyard, yeah.

But not out in public, no.

These boys, they don't know adventure.

You know, I always used to make a joke that

when Delilah and Sage would take a walk around Tecumseh,

it's like they went to Paris and back.

When someone comes over,

Von Deuce will sniff them from head to toe.

It's almost like his way of traveling.

Come on.

My blood sugar's going to nothing.

Never.

Maia, Maia, Maia, Maia, Maia.

Hey, come on over here, Maia, Maia.

Come on, sit down, sit down.

Mr. Finley, Mr. Finley, sit down.

Sit down. Daphne, sit down.

Okay, this is their vegan turkey.

We don't have any meat in the house,

but we have this fake stuff. I don't eat it, they eat it.

And see, this is domestication. I'm oppressing them right now.

Are you feeling oppressed?

Good boy.

Would you sit down?

I guess I would describe myself as a radical.

On the other hand, I would also say that my ideas

make perfect common sense and that most people,

if they thought about it,

would agree with me, at least a good part of the way.

The Abolitionist Approach is an animal rights theory

that I have developed.

It is a theory that requires that if you regard animals

as having moral value, that is, not being things,

you have an obligation to stop eating them, wearing them,

using them, and you should conduct your life

in a nonviolent way and not discriminate against

any sentient beings, human or nonhuman.

Come on. One aspect of The Abolitionist Approach is

that we should eliminate domestication.

This is Duncan. Say hello, Duncan.

Hello. Um, Duncan came from a shelter

in northern New Jersey, a city called Newark.

Lovely dog, as you can see, very loving.

And Duncan was found almost dead.

Someone had taped his face shut

so that he could not eat or drink.

This dog was very, very badly abused, very badly abused.

Finley is a white sheltie.

White shelties are obtained by breeding gray shelties

or merle shelties together,

and you sell them for a lot of money.

And the problem is, 25% of every litter is blind, deaf, or both.

Finley is both deaf and blind.

The person who had him was going to drown him,

and we said, no, no, we'll take him.

We've had blind dogs before. We've had deaf dogs before.

We've never had one that's blind and deaf.

People think that I don't like dogs.

I love dogs. That's not the point.

I adore all of them, but they're things I own.

If I decided right now that I want to take this dog

to a shelter, I would sign a waiver,

and it says, "If we can't find a home for this dog",

"you give us permission... You're transferring ownership,"

"and we have the right to kill the dog."

So when people say, well, you know, they're my children.

I regard them as family members.

Yeah, I understand that.

Some people do, but as I said,

that's more fetishistic than it is a statement that has

any cultural significance at all,

because as far as our culture is concerned,

as far as our law is concerned,

as far as our social thing, they're not.

They are things that we own.

Maggie, be quiet.

Please. He's trying to film.

See, that's the thing, you know, you don't want him

to bark, you don't want him to disturb people.

It's like their entire life is controlled by us.

When they eat, when they sleep, when they drink,

when they go outside, when they go for walks,

how they go for walks,

you know, it really is, I think it's just despicable.

If I let them go today,

they would all get sick, they would run over by cars.

They're not able to function the way wolves are.

We removed a lot of their animality, and we've done that

so that we can make them subservient to us,

and so we do with other animals too,

with cows, pigs, chickens, everything else.

So we want them to be docile and able to be manipulated.

I think that the whole process is just wrong.

Never, ever, ever have I heard an argument in favor of

domestication that makes any sense.

The best one that you get is,

well, dogs domesticated themselves, which is nonsense.

Wolves came close to humans because they got food,

and they alerted humans to intruders,

so it was mutually beneficial.

But if you're telling me that what animals contracted for

was to be bred to be.

Malteses or pugs, that's ridiculous.

Hello Pet Con,

we have doctor Cathy Lund of City Kitty.

Love is a very funny word to use in this context

because a lot of people who participate in dog shows,

for example, they love their dogs, but if you ever start

talking to them about not producing breeds that have

particular health issues,

they're going to get pretty upset with you.

We fetishize these animals.

They don't belong in this world.

They're completely at your mercy.

She loves to work.

You catch her going to the closet and pick dresses.

She seems to like pink and red the most.

Yes, he's very intellectual. He loves books.

He's now on his second book,

and he has over 4 million followers across all platforms.

Give me a kiss.

You know, there's a saying that

no one wants to see a picture of your baby,

but everyone wants to see a picture of your dog.

I'd like to think of myself

as a morally sensitive animal owner,

but I am still an animal owner.

The best that I can do is to be a benign slaveholder, basically.

And benign slavery is still violent.

Dogs are wonderful friends. They are wonderful friends.

That doesn't mean it's okay to continue to produce them

to be friends for us.

The dogs that have good lives in this world,

a small fraction...

Diesel was born in hell.

He was being starved.

He was laying on a concrete floor.

I witnessed him being kicked by workers with work boots,

shoved in a little baby crate, and they used

to hit the top of the crate with a stick,

and their mentality was to make him mean,

to make him a guard dog.

Over time, Diesel learned that he could trust me because,

let's face it, the poor dog went through so much

in the first part of his life, and then he could finally relax.

He picked his human, Mama.

Humans are barbarians.

We're barbarians.

Not all of us do.

That's her ankle, where Amy's dog bit her.

In my view, it looked kind of bad, to be honest with you,

but it wasn't to the level of serious

and permanent disfigurement.

I, Caroline Elizabeth Sholts', during my hospitalization,

I underwent multiple operations,

an infection of skin graft

and surgical staples.

I underwent physical therapy for four months.

The vicious attack was a very traumatic experience.

That she had rescued him from abusive situation.

He'll commonly go for the ankles.

That she would be putting the dog down.

The animal control officer said, that dog destroyed, mutilated,

mutilated the mail lady.

She'll never walk again.

She'll never work again.

Am I happy that she was bit by my dog?

No.

Any dog that bites, it's wrong. I get it.

But you can't take the instinct from a dog.

A dog is a dog.

Amy was entitled to a legal proceeding,

and it was not, as a legal matter, a fait accompli,

that the dog would be euthanized following the legal proceeding.

Euthanize a dog within hours, no. It's against the law.

You can't just pull the plug like that.

Boom.

Humans are at fault.

Somewhere along the line, that dog got let down.

Had rescued him from an abusive situation.

Plaintiff does admit that she signed the release form.

I'm relinquishing ownership of property.

You have a dog that has been treated as such,

and will never forget it.

It will never forget it.

Just like my experiences overseas,

I'll never forget it constantly...

Right? Constantly keeps going. Constantly keeps going.

So what she probably

needed to do, was create a different foundation,

give it less space to make its own decision.

The reasoning why that dog bit somebody,

it's because of the energy of the owner.

That person, it runs down leash.

Once again, it's bullshit what they did.

Don't get me wrong.

But, big picture wise,

is was that lady going to be able to turn anything around?

I don't know.

Probably not.

Three weeks, it's going to be five years.

And there's not a day that goes by I don't cry.

Some nights I lay in bed, trying to fall asleep,

and I just watch his videos.

I'm going to get you.

He was so smart.

♪ When it all goes to hell ♪

♪ Will you still be my friend?

And I loved him so much.

♪ My face to the sea and my back to the land ♪

I'm sorry.

♪ If you can't come with me ♪

♪ I'll understand ♪

♪ I'll understand ♪

I need to get a tissue.

♪ The end of the world at the palm of my hand ♪

♪ When it all goes to hell will you still be my friend ♪

♪ If you can't come with me I'll understand ♪

When they came to me with this one,

very seriously, I said, are you guys kidding?

What? Seriously?

You want me to try to get a bill passed into law

that will put a lawyer in court to represent the animal?

Wow.

Nobody is doing this.

No one in the world is doing it.

Today Representative Urban testified

at a hearing of her bill named Desmond's Law.

This would make Connecticut the first state that would allow

animal advocates in a courtroom during animal cruelty cases.

I'm an advocate for animal victims.

It's a third voice to speak to the court

to articulate that animal's position.

For the purposes of these hearings,

I've asked that the animal advocates

speak on behalf of the animals in this case.

The idea that animals are simply property

is already being questioned.

It's being questioned in our society, socially,

and it's being questioned in the law.

Animals are not just personal property.

They are members of our families.

They live, they breathe,

and they suffer just like you and I do.

The animals do not have a voice, so we are their voice.

So we do make all the court cases.

We're there to make sure that they follow through.

Desmond's Army is an amazing group of activists

who follow animal cruelty cases.

They signal to the court that there are members of the public

who care about these cases and care about their outcomes.

In today's case, the defendant was charged

with animal cruelty towards 31 cats and a dog

that were found in his house in various states of neglect.

The defendant argued that the offenses

were not so serious and eventually,

if they don't re-offend, have their charges dismissed.

The buildup of feces, urine, and vomit indicates

the defendant failed to maintain the home

for a significant period of time.

Defendant also chose to amputate one of his cat's paws at home

rather than take him to a vet.

This left the cat's legs deformed

and in need of total amputation.

Just by having an advocate there gets a court used to thinking

about these animals not as simply property,

which is where they lie right now legally,

but as something more.

Innocent animals that don't have a voice, that can't say, ouch.

Animals were starving, dying, suffering.

This court cannot find that this crime

is not of such a serious nature.

It is of a serious nature.

One of the most significant things that happened today

was the judge acknowledging that animals are voiceless

and that they can't say, ouch, and that was huge.

I think the way to get our courts to see

that we really, really care about these animals

is to deem them sentient beings.

Once we start to give legal representation to a dog

or a cat or a bunny or whatever,

now we're starting to say that animal is not property.

It really is an incremental step towards the advancement

of animals perceived as legal persons.

No, because the dog is...

The dog is someone else's property.

That person has abused that property

in some way that violates the law.

And, um, I don't... I just...

This is the sort of thing which is being touted

as some sort of great advancement.

I'm sorry, Hendrick, I just don't see it.

I really don't, and I just don't see it.

You know, it's like... It's sort of, like...

There's something else that has been popular recently

called an animal abuse registry.

Have you run across that in your... Yeah.

An animal abuse registry is,

if you have done something cruel to an animal,

you have to register in the way you would have to

if you were a pedophile or something.

And I find that bizarre, too, because, um

we're all... I mean, animal abuse,

we're all guilty of animal...

Anybody who's not a vegan is guilty of animal abuse.

I mean, we're all participating... you know...

People who are not vegans are directly participating

in the exploitation of nonhuman animals.

So then we take this person who's done a particular thing

to a dog or cat, and you say,

you're a particularly bad... You're a bad person morally.

I think that has the effect of sort of making the rest of us

feel that we're not abusers.

You, you are the person who did something to the dog and cat.

You're a bad person,

and you should be treated as equivalent to a pedophile.

The rest of us who engage in animal abuse,

we're good people because we don't do it to dogs and cats.

I think some people might look at that as a step forward.

I look at it as a hopeless expression

of the moral schizophrenia

that just completely surrounds all of our dealings

with nonhuman animals. It makes no sense whatsoever.

To me, it makes no sense whatsoever.

When we look at our relationships with animals,

we see glaring inconsistencies.

For example, poll after poll after poll has found that

most Americans will say they agree to the question

animals should have the same rights as humans to live.

But yet, 95% of Americans eat animals.

I don't know how many people I know who say,

I love animals, I love my dogs so much,

and as they're biting into a juicy hamburger.

I'm like, I'm glad you don't love me that much.

If we were to decide tomorrow that dogs are nonhuman persons,

wow, where does that leave us with chickens and pigs and cows?

It would open up, to use a speciesist expression,

a can of worms.

People might be willing to say,

yeah, my dog deserves an advocate,

but it's a whole other thing for people to accept the idea

that an animal has rights to not be harmed.

I think it frightens people because with legal person hood

comes a forced reckoning with our use of animals.

Dogs are sort of an ambassador species

to thinking about animals differently.

People, you know, are increasingly thinking

that it's wrong to euthanize a dog for behavioral reasons

because we're violating their right to live.

Well, once you go there,

then you've opened the door to other species.

My ideal solution for animals

would be that they have legal person hood

and standing in court based on that person hood,

and that they can enforce rights to not be harmed,

to be free of captivity, to be free of assault.

I can tell you as a lawyer, law doesn't lead social change

and social thinking. Law follows.

So as long as most of us think that it's morally okay

to exploit animals,

then there's never going to be any legal change.

We need a moral paradigm shift.

I could see a world in which

when we start taking pets seriously,

that we decide that it's unethical to have pets,

that we will look back on pet keeping as a

as something that we don't do anymore

because we're not doing the animals right.

In my idea, the dog would have the status

of any person that you can talk about,

that he would be a sentient being that would have rights.

And we would then see that animal as someone.

Not something, but someone.

That's a strange one.

Ethical to have a dog.

I don't think I can answer that.

Maybe, um...

Maybe rephrase that, counselor.

♪ You got my attention, baby ♪

♪ And I can't make a move ♪

♪ Like a child that's starved for love ♪

♪ I'll stay there as long as I have to ♪

♪ I'll cry a river of tears ♪

♪ That flows to the sea ♪

♪ Baby, if you run away ♪

♪ Baby, if you leave ♪

♪ I'm so in love with you, girl ♪

♪ You make me feel brand new ♪

♪ Come on, give it up to me ♪

♪ Let me take care of you ♪

♪ I know that your mama said ♪

♪ I'm gonna make you cry all night ♪

♪ I'll cry a river of tears ♪

♪ That flows to the sea ♪

♪ Baby, if you run away, Baby, if you leave ♪