Animal Hope Project (PEA): Ain't Cute

That adorable puppy you see at pet shops, all groomed and wearing a ribbon, will just about make anyone want to take it home. But do you know how it got there? It may have been through some hard times before reaching the shop window, warns the new "Ain’t cute" campaign by the Animal Hope Project (PEA). The action calls attention to a recurrent theme in Brazilian’s daily life, but one that often goes unnoticed: the illegal breeding and raising of animals and cases of animal cruelty that go on behind closed doors in the pet trade. The film, created by the ad agency Leo Burnett Tailor Made, shows that amid filthy, crowded cages and diseases, females are made to copulate more than five times a day. They even mate with their own offspring and are then discarded. The scenes, which are animations, go on to show puppies that are blind, deaf and even without a paw, all the result of irresponsibility; and that - to avoid expenses - the animals are almost never vaccinated and can die before reaching three months of age. The survivors of this series of mistreatments are those little pups in the display windows waiting for an owner. The campaign encourages the adoption of animals and seeks to show the public that they are often as much a victim as the animals themselves for not knowing what happens to these pedigree puppies before they are bought. That’s what the lyrics of the film’s soundtrack tells us, as interpreted by the puppies themselves at a bouncy rhythm reminiscent of Broadway musicals.