Third-party report finds that the Dog’s Purpose video was intentionally misleading

The American Humane Association—the organization that monitors film sets for evidence of animals being mistreated, and which issues the famous “No animals were harmed” disclaimer to movies—has released the details of an independent, third-party report on a video that purported to show a German Shepherd being abused on the set of A Dog’s Purpose. According to the report, the footage—which shows the dog apparently scrabbling to stay out of a pool, and later sinking beneath its surface—was “deliberately edited for the purpose of misleading the public and stoking outrage. In fact, the two scenes shown in the edited video were filmed at different times.” The report also notes that multiple experts were on the scene to ensure safety protocols were being followed, that the dog in question, Hercules, “was selected for his love of the water, and had been professionally trained and conditioned for the water scenes over the course of six weeks,” and that filming was stopped on those occasions when signs of stress were noted. (The AHA report does lightly censure the film for not recognizing stress in the animal earlier, but otherwise affirms that all on-set procedures were followed.)