Pet Conversations: Short Films Providing Glimpses into the World of Pet Lovers

You are at a party with your friends. After catching up on your lives and discussing the latest news, the subject turns to your pets. Then, the rest of the evening is spent chatting about what your dog did on the hike last weekend, their cat’s newest friend, or their parrot’s favorite pastime. Famed National Geographic photographer Cary Wolinsky and his filmmaker son Yari Wolinsky realized these conversations were revealing about people. They decided to capture people’s chatter about their beloved pets in a series of short documentary films called Pet Conversations that are now available on a YouTube channel of the same name.

Pet Conversations films, which are often hilarious and no more than five minutes each, explore the profound bond between humans and their animals through interviews with a diverse group of people. The focus is on the people unlike most pet videos found on YouTube.

In season one, you will find sculptor Rick Brown talking about moving with his family and their rescued dog to a new home in Texas that came with fancy chickens in The Chicken Eater. One can only guess what happened to the chickens. In Amos, Deb Malloch recalls growing up in Wyoming and a particular reunion where her pet skunk upstaged her sister. Everyone was more interested in the 45 pound de-scented skunk that wore sweaters and walked on a leash.

In The Sound and the Fury,makeup artist Rae Bertellotti and her husband Robert share their strange obsession with pugs. Rae proudly talks about dressing up puppy Dolly in a sweater, with a pearl bracelet fitted around the neck and a Garbo hat and flowers for a calendar shoot. As if on cue, Dolly, sitting on Rae’s lap, jumps up for a good licking of her two legged friend’s nose as if it were a yummy treat. I wonder if it’s a pug thing.  

Producer and director duo Cary and Yari Wolinsky of Pet Conversations included a snippet of their own lives with one of their border collies, Belle, who has a whining frenzy in the car on the way to a park. Hearing her excited pleas reminded me of my own collie mix, Indu, who provides a similar soundtrack whenever I am driving to her favorite destination. 

One viewer expressed to Cary: "First I saw Olga's remembrances in Jake and Lena on my cell phone, and her lovely eyes and way of speaking were captivating—brought tears to my eyes and made me think of my own mother." The short film is about two squirrels named Jake and Lena that Olga’s brother brought home from the woods in a coal mining town during the great depression. He made them into pets, fed them daily in their cage that was attached to their kitchen window, until one day their mom made him return them to the wild.

Olga remembers, "Something about the depression that drew you to animals. It made you feel more caring because of all the uncaring that was going on."

Cary and Yari Wolinsky hope to create more short films full of good storytellers. In the meantime, you can catch all the films from season one on their YouTube channel.

For a good laugh, make sure to watch pug Dolly in The Sound and The Fury: