Last year, I wrote what I thought was an innocuous story about Eva Mendes based on some new-at-the-time photos. I remember that day – it was super-slow and I thought it was interesting that Eva was running errands around LA with her giant dog, but that she hadn’t put her dog on a leash, so she ended up half-choking her puppy as she walked with him from a building to her car. That whole situation was somewhat familiar to me – I don’t take my dog out for errands without putting him on his leash (because he’s a bad dog who runs away), but I’ve had occasion to clutch my dog’s collar tightly, assuming the half-choke position, just to control his movements for a short time.
Anyway, when Eva was on The Late Show last week (sorry I’m just getting to this now, I didn’t know if I wanted to cover it), Eva talked about her Belgian Malinois Hugo and how “All he wants to do is prove his love to me, you know, all he wants to do is kill for me. It’s so sweet.” Again, I sort of know what that’s like. My dog can be ferocious – 100 pounds of snarling dog – but only with, like, groundhogs and rabbits. When deer come onto my property, my dog actually cries. I’m serious. The deer upset him! So, what is Eva solution for her dog’s killer instinct? She told Dave, “I’d feel terrible if he hurt a little thing so I try to get in there and I use — people always get mad at me for this — but I use a shock collar on him… And I have the remote. But I’ve tried it on myself at all levels… I swear!” Here’s the video:
I have mixed feelings about this. While I believe that Eva isn’t trying to be cruel to her puppy and I’ll buy that she doesn’t shock her dog just for the hell of it, only as a path to behavior modification, I do find cruelty in the entire situation. Eva starts the story by telling Dave that Hugo is an “attack dog”. I take that to mean that Hugo was trained to be a protector, a guard dog, an attack dog. Which means that WTF is Eva doing taking Hugo out when she’s just running errands and getting her hair done? That is a dangerous situation just waiting to happen, with or without the shock collar.
Incidentally, Eva has a new interview with NY Magazine and she actually complains about people knowing about her dog! Here’s the weird part:
Mendes and Gosling have known each other for years; he recommended her to Cianfrance for Pines. But when I ask how the couple met, Mendes cuts me off. “That’s where I start to shut down, because it gets into personal territory that I don’t feel comfortable talking about. So sorry.” She wishes that tabloids would blur the faces of their dogs, Hugo (hers) and George (his), in photos, like British papers do to kids’ faces. “I’ll go somewhere and they’ll be like, ‘Hey, Hugo!’ and I’m like, ‘How do you know Hugo’s name? That’s so creepy!’” Pushing my luck, I ask if she wants kids. “I’m so out of here!” she says, laughing. “You know the cartoon where the steam comes out and it says, ‘Boop-beep-boop. System down!’?” She disappears into the bathroom for a long time, but returns just as I begin to wonder if I’ve been ditched.
Girl, you JUST told a story about your dog on The Late Show! People know about your dog because you talk about him on nationally televised interviews! And people ask about Ryan Gosling because you make sure to get pap’d with him once a month!! Ugh.
Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.
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