Dogs episode 2, “Bravo, Zeus”, is an interesting look at immigration.
When you think of immigration, dogs are not the first things to come to mind. But they might after watching “Bravo, Zeus”, the second episode of the Netflix documentary series Dogs.
While the first episode, “The Kid With the Dog,” dealt with an Ohio girl and her service dog, this episode deals with a Syrian refugee named Ayham and his Siberian Husky Zeus.
Two years earlier, Ayham was forced to flee Syria and his city of Damascus, forced to leave Zeus behind. Now he’s in Germany living in Berlin, studying web design and trying to figure out how to get his friend across the border.
His best friend Amer is still in Syria, taking care of Zeus, but he wishes to leave, meaning that the Zeus problem is becoming ever more pressing.
Zeus was chosen because he was the runt of the litter, always picked on by his siblings.
Ayham finds a woman named Rawa who runs a rescue organization called Animals Syria, and heer colleague Bishr agrees with smuggle Zeus across the Lebanon border with Amer and Ayham’s amputee former roommate Naji.
Once that’s accomplished, helped in part at the border by Zeus’ photogenic qualities, Naji isn’t allowed to fly with Zeus the rest of the way, so Rawa’s friend Coco completes the trek and reunites him with Ayham.
Our thoughts
The war-torn Middle East isn’t something many of us think about very often, or wonder what life there might be like. Similarly, we don’t often consider the challenges refugees face on a daily basis in trying to assimilate into a new culture.
The ethics of smuggling Zeus out of the country are murky, but “Bravo, Zeus” as an episode did well at providing a very different perspective worth chewing on.
The reenacted B-roll of the process of escaping covertly in the dead of night is quite frightening, and showcasing the ray of hope that Zeus’ presence brought to the children of the neighborhood was much needed and very valuable.
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