Dogs and Eco-trauma in One Nation Under Dog (2012) and City of Dogs (2016)

In documentaries exploring negative relationships between humans and dogs, people tend to de-personalize dogs, seemingly justifying the terrible suffering they endure. In part three of One Nation Under Dog, for example, animal shelter employees must ameliorate massive dog overpopulation and the overcrowded kennels that results. As the film declares, there are more than three million homeless dogs, and more than 70% of them are routinely euthanized in animal shelters. The documentary takes the time to show viewers the terrible suffering these dogs endure when placed in canine gas chambers. Well-behaved dogs are walked by leash to the chamber and piled on top of one another. The chamber is closed and locked, and the attendant starts the gas. Dogs howl and scream in pain before the gas silences them. When the attendant opens the chamber, we see the lifeless corpses. Now flattened with death, they provide room for another layer of dogs in the chamber. This time the attendant brings in dozens of puppies and drops them on top, again closing and locking the lid. The high-pitched yelps and howls are painful to hear. And when they too grow silent, a dump truck rolls up to take them all to a rendering plant. These dogs are not pets or even subjects. They are trash.

This segment of One Nation Under Dog depersonalizes dogs, so they can be more readily and easily killed. City of Dogs—an episode of Louis Theroux’s LA Stories series--bastardize the relationship between humans and dogs, turning the bond into a vicious and vindictive connection built on blood and driven by commerce and power. Set on the south side of Los Angeles, City of Dogs showcases the chaotic world of gang dogs and the limited solutions for these delinquent canines. As a patrolling pit bull enthusiast exclaims, “It is hard to choose which one to kill today.” Dogs are left behind when homes are foreclosed. Others are bred as puppies and thrown out of their homes, remaining unclaimed when they go back home. They are in pain and suffering from hunger worms, and fleas, and the pit bull enthusiast wants to help as many of them as possible find a new home. Their alternative is death in a dog ring or an overcrowded shelter like that found in One Nation Under Dog. In this violent section of LA, residents even train these dogs to attack assailants. After fighting and killing other dogs, though, these dogs are deemed monstrous menaces and euthanized. There is no hope for rehabilitation.

Only a Zen dog trainer finds hope in these violent canine weapons and retrains a violent German Shepherd. When he removes its muzzle, it doesn’t attack. As the trainer explains, “We created it. It is not what we wanted. Why should we have to deal with aggressive dogs?” but he “hasn’t met a dog that must be destroyed.” The object is to “exist with him emotionally in the moment instead of teaching commands,” and after several training sessions, dogs sometimes become rehabilitated. The documentary explains that dogs are “among us but not truly of us. They are a colonized species whose chief flaw is to misunderstand us.” Many dogs in shelters and on the streets live like death row inmates, waiting for their inevitable destruction. In City of Dogs, the only hope is to accept dogs as companion species, existing with them as does the Zen trainer who successfully retrains attack dogs.