GLASTONBURY – Police are investigating an alleged case of animal cruelty after a video showing a man slamming his dog into furniture began circulating online yesterday.
“The Glastonbury Police Department would like to thank the public for its interest in this case and for bringing the incident and video clip to our attention,” police wrote in a Thursday release. Police did not name anyone involved in the investigation.
On Thursday morning, Glastonbury-based fitness influencer Mike Gerchy took to Instagram, where his business account has nearly 85,000 followers, to explain the video, which he said was two years old and “doctored.”
The video, posted online by animal rights group Desmond’s Army Animal Law Advocates on Wednesday night, appears to show Gerchy repeatedly kicking one of his dogs, a black-and-white pup named Stitch, as well as picking up the dog and throwing it onto a sofa and onto the ground.
In three separate Instagram posts on Wednesday and Thursday, including one posted with the dogs, Gerchy pushed back on the claims he was abusing Stitch and said he had intervened to protect the two young children in the room, as well as Thor, the other dog in the video.
“Am I proud of what happened? Absolutely not. But because of what I did and how quick my actions were, Thor is still alive, and also because of that, Stitch is still alive,” Gerchy said, explaining that Stitch would have been euthanized if he had killed Thor. He said the video had been shared by an ex-partner.
Gerchy also posted a video that shows the events immediately preceding the video shared by Desmond’s Army. In the video he posted, two young girls are playing with Thor in the center of the living room, when Stitch gets off the couch, walks over to Thor and starts biting his face, seemingly without provocation.
The girls scream, and the video shows Gerchy running into the room, hitting Stitch on the head, and then prying his jaws off Thor.
“I’m posting this video so everybody can see what really happened in the video that somebody posted about me beating stitch,” Gerchy wrote. “I love my dogs more than anything, but if the police saw Thor being attacked by stitch, they would’ve shot him and killed him.”
Gerchy said that Stitch had attacked Thor at least four times while Thor was a puppy, including an incident where Stitch broke Thor’s jaw in half, and another time where Stitch broke Thor’s leg. Gerchy said the attacks cost him around $16,000.
“I’m a very good man. I love my kids. I love my family, and I especially love my dogs,” Gerchy said in one of his Instagram posts. “I spend every waking second with my dogs, 24 hours a day. They are my life, and I love them more than anything.”
This article originally published at Video of CT fitness influencer kicking his dog under investigation, police say.
