YouTuber Brooke Houts has apologised and Los Angeles police are investigating after footage of the 20-year-old hitting her dog went viral on Thursday.
The footage shows Houts appearing to smack and spit on her dog after it jumps on her multiple times.
Houts, who has more than 330,000 subscribers on the platform, appeared to accidentally share the clip to her channel on Tuesday. The footage included an un-edited segment with her dog, Sphinx, as she prepares to film a “plastic wrap prank on my doberman” prank video (let’s not get started on the ethics of that, either.) The video was downvoted tens of thousands of times and had its comments disabled, before ultimately being removed on Thursday.
On Thursday morning popular YouTube commentator Keemstar shared the clip to Twitter, prompting an avalanche of angry reaction and tens of thousands of tweets.
SHOCKING! YouTuber @brookehouts uploads a unedited wrong video file to her channel! The Unedited version shows her ABUSING HER DOG! pic.twitter.com/3dKE3DvQVL
— KEEM 🍿 (@KEEMSTAR) August 7, 2019
Houts initially responded to the backlash on Wednesday, before Thursday’s surge of viral and police attention. Publishing a lengthy statement on Twitter, she denied spitting on her dog and declared she was “not a dog abuser or animal abuser in any way, shape, or form.”
https://twitter.com/brookehouts/status/1158906113741299712?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1158906113741299712&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.complex.com%2Fpop-culture%2F2019%2F08%2Fyoutuber-responds-blacklash-video-shoving-smacking-dog
“Should I have gotten as angry as I did in the video? No. Should I have raised my voice and yelled at him? No,” wrote Houts, explaining that things in her outside life had been “less than exceptional”, affecting her mood.
“When my 75 pound doberman is jumping up in my face with his mouth open, I do, as a dog parent, have to show him that this behaviour is unacceptable. But I want to make it known, regardless of what my dog does, I should not have acted that way towards him.”
The Los Angeles Police Department’s Animal Cruelty Task Force told The Verge it was “looking into” the incident after receiving multiple complaints.
Pedestrian has contacted YouTube for comment.
