David Hache couldn’t believe his eyes the first time he saw the woman beat her dog. He and his girlfriend sat there, stunned, while she rained blows down onto the cowering animal.
Hache and his girlfriend left shortly afterwards, still in shock, he said.
“She just viciously beat that dog in front of us,” he said. “I talked about it with my girlfriend and we said we we're going to record them.”
And that’s what he did, although he and his girlfriend had to visit with the couple several more times before it happened again. They had only known the couple for three weeks, following an introduction by a mutual friend, when he filmed that now infamous two videos depicting the abuse.
He said the couple was kind of odd and seemed desperate for friends.
“The first couple days they were telling us how they had no friends and no one to hang out with,” Hache said. “We felt kind of bad for them.”
He said even on the night of June 13, the night he filmed the two videos, the couple “begged us” to stay over. After having already seen the woman beat the dog, Chico, once, Hache told Sudbury.com he and his girlfriend had no intention of staying.
Just after midnight, while the two couples were talking, “suddenly she started freaking out on the dog.”
Hache had his camera ready and captured the entire incident in two short videos.
What frustrated him about the situation, he said, was the behaviour the animal was being punished for was entirely the fault of the owners. The couple didn’t put dog food down for the dog because he would defecate on the floor, but in all the time Hache and his girlfriend visited, they never saw them take their dogs outside. And because they didn’t put food down, Chico would get into the cat’s food, and then be beaten for it.
“They were trying to justify [the abuse] to me and my girlfriend,” Hache said. “We just stared at them like ‘What the hell?’”
He said if you watch the video closely, you can even see the woman hand Hache her rings to hold while she beat Chico with her fists, as the dog tried to hide behind Hache, whimpering.
Asked why he filmed the event instead of stepping into stop it, the 22-year-old said he felt having the evidence was better. He might have been able to stop it that night by speaking up, but having proof meant he could stop the abuse forever.
Since he recorded it in the middle of the night, Hache simply uploaded the video to Facebook at around 3 a.m. “to show people what was happening,” planning on phoning police in the morning.
He said the videos went viral so quickly, the police contacted him before he had a chance to call them.
Seen thousands of times by now, Hache said he has “hundreds and hundreds” of Facebook messages from all over the world from media and from members of the public, either congratulating him or looking for an interview.
“I didn’t think it would go this far … I didn’t think it would go all across the world,” he said.
And while he appreciates the messages of thanks, he said he just wanted to do something to help the animals.
“A hero? I was just trying to raise awareness that this stuff goes on,” Hache said.
He said Chico might look like the kind of dog who would “eat your face off,” but is actually a gentle, affectionate animal.
“The first time we met him, he just came up to us, wagging his tail,” he said.
But if you were to try to pet him, the dog would whimper and cower, which Hache found strange at first, until he saw how the animal was being treated.
The couple, an 18-year-old woman and a 20-year-old man, who are not being named by police, face one count each of animal cruelty. They are scheduled to appear in court on July 19.
The couple’s pets, two dogs and three kittens, have been removed from their custody and, after being checked out by a veterinarian, are being cared for by animal professionals, GSPS said.
Despite a rumour and a petition circulating on Facebook, there are no plans to euthanize Chico, who appears to be a bull terrier, the Sudbury branch of the Ontario SPCA said in a statement released yesterday.
