Brooke Houts, a YouTuber with 320,000+ subscribers, has recently come under fire after accidentally uploading raw footage of a video she was making with her Doberman, Sphinx.

The video, posted to YouTube.com on August 6, shows her hitting the dog, smacking the dog, pinning him to the ground and shouting “NO!," and spitting on the dog.

The video was quickly taken down and replaced with the edited version, but many had already seen it by the time she took it down, and the footage can still be found online.

Houts has since uploaded her attempt at an apology, in which she claims "On the day in particular that the video was filmed, and actually this past week, things in my outside life have been less than exceptional."

Does having a bad day excuse hitting your dog? How about pinning your dog to the ground and spitting on him? Does anything excuse this?

This wasn't a mistake. No one hits and spits on a living creature by mistake. If this is what Houts is comfortable doing on camera, what could she be doing to her dog off camera? 

Multiple videos on Houts's YouTube channel focus on Sphinx, and she even has created an Instagram account for the dog. This would be fine if she properly cared for him, but when you witness her mistreatment of her dog, it seems that Sphinx was only ever an accessory for Houts to show off and a tool to use to gain YouTube fame.

Of course, the best outcome for this would be that Sphinx would be rehomed and Houts would be charged with animal abuse. Unfortunately, this is a lot to ask for, so instead I ask for the bare minimum to be done: ban Brooke Houts from YouTube. Delete her channel, her videos, any reupload of her abuse, and never allow her to have a channel or any sort of influence ever again. 

YouTube - To allow Brooke Houts to continue on your platform after blatantly violating YouTube guidelines and proving herself to be a violent, dangerous individual towards animals is the same as condoning her behavior. A person like her should never be allowed to have influence or an audience, and keeping up her channel and videos reflects very poorly back onto YouTube itself.

By allowing Houts's videos and channel to remain online, YouTube is essentially normalizing the mistreatment of animals, particularly for the young and impressionable viewers that are a majority on YouTube's website. To see Houts escape from this drama with her channel intact with no punishment from the platform in which she used to broadcast her abuse also creates a risk for copycat behavior by those desperate for YouTube fame and attention.