Dennis Quaid Denies Any Animal Abuse Happened On The Set Of “A Dog’s Purpose”
A quick minute after TMZ posted gross footage of a trainer forcing Hercules the German shepherd into churning water on the set of A Dog’s Purpose, the movie’s director Lasse Hallström and one of its stars Josh Gad called the clip “disturbing.” One of the movie’s other stars, Dennis Quaid, is also disturbed but in a different way. Dennis Quaid is disturbed that a low-down dirty scammer would edit and manipulate behind-the-scenes footage for a stack of money. Basically, Dennis thinks that anybody who believes dog abuse is happening in that clip got GOT!
The clip caused the American Humane Association to suspend the rep they had on set in Winnipeg. The AHA and the Chief Veterinary Office of Manitoba are also doing their own investigations. PETA screamed for a boycott, and the premiere of A Dog’s Purpose was canceled, and so was its press junket. But Dennis Quaid is still pushing the movie, which comes out this Friday. During an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Dennis dropped a big old shit on the dog abuse claims. “Isn’t that interesting?“, thought the dog in that screen shot who had to suffer while getting Quaid snot on its schnoz.
The movie’s producer Gavin Polone wrote a long piece for The Hollywood Reporter about what happened. Gavin admits that what happened in the clip is inexcusable, but adds that the video is highly edited and makes it look like Hercules was thrown in and almost drowned. Gavin says that when he reviewed the rest of the footage, he never saw Hercules thrown into the water. Gavin says that Hercules always went in on his own. Gavin also says that if the person who shot the video was really concerned about how the dog actors were treated, they wouldn’t have sold the video to TMZ. They would’ve used the video to make sure that whoever was responsible got punished. Dennis co-signs what Gavin says. Dennis wasn’t there when they shot that particular scene with Hercules, but claims he also saw the footage.
“My experience is that the animals were treated great. There was no animal abuse on the set. And that video that someone took and sold for money and held onto it for a year and a half until right before the film’s coming out, does not tell the whole story. I’ve seen all the footage and it’s edited and manipulated and I think it’s a scam to tell you the truth. That was towards the end of the day and I would not say that in the real context the dog was frightened. The dog was acting like a dog who was kind of tired of taking a bath and was ready to get out. In fact, that’s what happened. They took the dog out.”
Dennis went on to say that earlier in the day, Hercules was so damn excited about getting into the water that the pooch actually had to be held back from doing so. Dennis never saw any dark-sided dog abuse going down and he wouldn’t pimp out of the movie if he had.
“I was there. I never saw any abuse of any animal. If there had been, I would have walked. I certainly would have not been out here supporting the film if any abuse had occurred. All the footage I saw, the dog was going into the water happily. It had to be restrained from actually going into the water, many times that day.”
Cesar Milan better watch it, because Dennis Quaid is the new Dog Whisperer!
In the clip that TMZ posted, Hercules looks scared and traumatized to me. So if there’s footage of Hercules cannonballing into the water with joy several times, why don’t they release it? Or just scrap that scene and reshoot it with a topless Dennis Quaid. Or just scrap the whole finished movie and replace it with a 2-hour scene of a topless Dennis Quaid jumping into the water over and over again. Dennis Quaid’s nipples and 61-year-old cum gutters will make everything better.
And since I brought up Dennis Quaid’s cum gutters, here they are in Maui in 2011.
Pics: Amblin/Universal, Splash