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“I guess if anything I’ve learned from this is that courage is so deeply contagious.”
Jena Malone is giving an update on the dog she helped rescue from an alleged abuser on the side of the street earlier this week.
On Friday, the actress posted an Instagram video, in which she shared how the dog, who is named Champion, is doing now, while also reflecting on the incident.
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Malone, 37, already shared on Twitter on Wednesday that Champ was “out of the hospital,” however, in her new video, the “Hunger Games” star said the pup “has a cast on his back leg and a cast on his front arm, but seems really happy to be home.”
“And it’s really beautiful,” she explained, before thanking those who donated to the GoFundMe, which has already reached its $10,000 goal and is close to hitting $15,000. “I’m always in awe of [when] people come together and make things happen, you know?”
Malone went on to address those who are worried about Champion’s safety moving forward.
“I know that there was some concerns about the dog safety going back to the owner because the owner was actually the abuser’s mom,” she explained. “But I’ve been talking to her and other people have been talking to her.”
The “Stepmom” actress said she hadn’t felt “comfortable sharing” the woman’s story, but noted that the owner has opened up about the incident on different platforms. However, Malone noted that the woman “is estranged from her son” and stressed that she’s “doing everything she can to protect that little pup.”
“So just know that your concerns are not, you know, going unanswered or anything like that,” she said.
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“I guess if anything I’ve learned from this is that courage is so deeply contagious,” Malone shared. “It was just a really valuable thing for me to realize and be a part of and remember in this world, ’cause it’s a hard thing to remember.”
A video shared by NBC LA on Monday showed the moment a group of witnesses near Sunset Boulevard banded together to apprehend a man they said was abusing his pet, as they dished out a beating of their own.
Among the witnesses interviewed was Malone, who later detailed the incident on Twitter in a series of tweets, revealing that she was the first to give chase.
“This was really scary. I saw a man kicking repeatedly a small dog on the sunset, yanking him up in the air and absolutely choking the dog,” she wrote, sharing the news link.
“I yelled at him to stop from my car but he wouldn’t. I got out of my car to try and get the dog but he started running,” Malone continued. “So I started chasing him. I saw other people watching on the street upset, as they must have seen the same abhorrent behavior I witnessed, so I tried to signal a man in an orange vest to run with me to chase him.”
“Cause at that point I really didn’t think I was going to be able to get the dog back by myself,” the “Sucker Punch” actress explained. “After another block of chasing him down I looked back and there were 5 other men behind me pursuing him. Which felt like a miracle.”
“So at this point I held back and let them take the lead as I have no business trying to restrain a full grown man,” Malone tweeted. “I went back to get my car (it was still running) and drove to see if they caught him.”
She said that about six blocks from where the chase started, a big group had gathered, and it appeared the man no longer had the dog. But he was about to get something else instead.
As the video shows, three men caught up with the alleged abuser, throwing him to the ground and beating him up. One is battering him with a wooden stick, while another even dishes out a head stomp.
“So I pulled over to make sure that dog was going to be cared for,” Jena continued. “I didn’t see the brawl but I was told that the man did not give up the dog without a fight.”
“And this is the tail end of a heated fight that ensued. The cops came and took the guy. I waited with dog til another cop came to take them to the hospital. The dog was covered in filth and looked like it had been not taken care of for months.”
Malone — who was not involved in the minute-long beating — said Champion had been treated in hospital for “a fractured rib, bone breaks in [its] hind legs and another fracture in its right paw.”
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“It was absolutely horrific seeing an animal treated this way,” she tweeted. “I’m sorry that it ended in a brawl but the dog was going to die. No question. I can’t imagine the level of torture it had suffered until this point. …”
Meanwhile, in the video she shared on Instagram on Friday, Malone shared more details from the incident, revealing how she happened to be driving near the area at the time.
Appearing to respond to a fans who asked for “updates” on Zack Snyder’s upcoming film, “Rebel Moon,” in which Malone will star, Malone said she had just came from training for the movie before she witnessed the attack.
“The interesting part of the story is that I was leaving training, you know, from ‘Rebel Moon,’” she recalled. “I also was thinking that I was probably had like adrenaline in my body or something. And honestly, if my son was in the car at the time, I probably wouldn’t have done what I was able to do.”
However, the “Pride & Prejudice” star stressed that she believes someone else would have intervened even if she hadn’t.
“I do feel very strongly that it wasn’t just me obviously, you know, if I hadn’t done something, there was a lot of people hanging around where I was,” Malone explained. “I know that someone else would’ve done something because obviously a whole crowd formed to stop it.”
She concluded, “It was that obvious that it was absolutely wrong. You know, it wasn’t a moderate form of abuse, whatever that is even, but just one that might have been perceived as objective or something like that, it was absolutely wrong.”
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