Dog Doc Highlights Human-Canine Connection

Winik, a Westville native, state marshal, and chair of Branford’s Water Pollution Control Authority, had no filmmaking experience at the time.

But he had just written his first novel, The Dog Healers, set in his wife’s home country of Argentina, that wrapped an adventure, mystery, and romance narrative around the unique bond between humans and canines.

“What I really wanted to do was capture the theme of the novel,” Winik said about the movie on a recent episode of WNHH Radio’s ​“Deep Focus.” .
That theme, which he pitched to the Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales (INCAA) in Argentina back in 2017, was ​“how dogs help humans and help heal humans each day, or in times when we need them most. And how special they are, the beautiful role they play in our lives, and the way they can lift our spirits in a way that modern medicine can’t.”

And the pitch worked.

Winik won the support of the state Argentine film society, from an assistant who he said loved the book and had a special affinity for dogs. He spent the subsequent year making the half-hour documentary, also called ​“The Dog Healers,” in collaboration with an Argentine director, producer, and film crew.

The movie premiered at the 2019 New Haven Documentary Film Festival and won the local fest’s award for best short documentary. It focuses on a celebrated Buenos Aires dog trainer named Jorge ​“Pampita” Montenegro.

With shoulder-length black hair and always wearing camouflage army fatigues, Montenegro takes the audience on a canine-support journey of the Argentinian capital. He visits an elderly blind woman who feels like her guide dog is a second child, and is so connected with the pup that the latter not only leads her across the street and avoids traffic, but helps her find nearby trash cans after he’s pooped on the sidewalk.

They also visit a prison where a dog trainer teaches incarcerated women how to train dogs to be support animals for the disabled.

And then to the home of a wheelchair-bound teenage boy who goes to the park everyday with his dog, playing catch and socializing with other kids his age.

Winik said he was connected to INCAA in the first place by a New Havener of Argentine heritage who read his book, loved it, and put in a call with the prestigious South American film society. He and his wife have long visited Buenos Aires at least once a year to visit her family, he said. Working on the movie required not just trips to Argentina, but lots of Skype calls with the filmmaking crew as they tried to figure out which stories best captured the emotional, spiritual, and physical connection between dogs and their owners.

“It’s almost like no other place in the world,” he said about the dog-walking culture in Buenos Aires. ​“You’ll see hundreds and hundreds of dog walkers walking anywhere between three dogs and 20 dogs at a time.” They would through all of the city’s neighborhoods in the early mornings, and then all end up in the parks for hours of play. ​“For a dog lover, it’s exciting. It just captured my attention.”

“I have no background at all” in filmmaking, he said. But he was lucky enough to get a meeting with someone from INCAA, they loved and helped fund the movie, and now he’s in talks with the organization again about creating a documentary series all about the relationship between people and dogs.

The Dog Healers the movie will be playing at the Latino and Iberian Film Festival at Yale (LIFFY) this year, as well as at a Spanish-language film festival at Southern Connecticut State University. Click here to learn more about the movie.

And Winik will be reading from his novel,The Dog Healers at the downtown branch of the public library on Elm Street on Thursday, Sept. 19, at 6 p.m. Click here to learn more.

Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch the full interview.