Nick Bateman Rescues Tiny Dog From Road in Dramatic Video During Ride-Along With PETA

Instagram Influencer Helps Group Deliver Doghouses, Straw Bedding, Food, and Affection to Dogs Who Would Otherwise Go Without Basic Necessities

For Immediate Release:
March 12, 2019

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Model and influencer Nick Bateman recently hit the road with PETA’s fieldworkers for a new video highlighting the suffering of “outdoor dogs” who are forced to brave the cold winter weather chained or penned up outside—and in a dramatic moment captured on camera, he rescued a dog found running loose on a rural highway.

The lost dog was reunited with his grateful guardian several days later, thanks to PETA’s team, but Bateman—joined by his fiancée, Maria—spent the remainder of the day giving healthy food, clean water, doghouses with insulating straw bedding, and much-needed affection to dogs tied up in backyards in rural areas of North Carolina and Virginia near the organization’s Norfolk headquarters.

“What I found shocking is people don’t realize that what they’re doing to the dogs is wrong,” says Bateman. “They just think it’s normal to just tie their dog up outside….[It] is kind of infuriating, considering how cold it is here.”

The team also visited a dog whose too-tight collar was digging into her neck and another who was tied to a stair rail by a leash so short that she couldn’t move freely and whose water bucket had a frozen layer of dirty water at the top. All the dogs they saw were desperate for affection and thrilled to be taken for a walk.

Many dogs across the U.S. are kept “out of sight, out of mind,” often with nothing but an overturned trash bin or plastic barrel—or nothing at all—to protect them from the weather. Many are deprived of adequate food, water, and veterinary care, and their emotional and social needs are completely ignored. People who witness neglect should report it to local authorities—and, if possible, take pictures.

“It’s important to never be silent and always speak up for animals,” says Bateman, who’s part of a long list of celebrities—including Bella Thorne, Gregg Sulkin, and Amanda Cerny—who’ve teamed up with PETA to promote kindness to animals.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, which is a supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.