Let’s Not Forget Pipit the Dog — the Often Unsung Second Victim of ‘Jaws’
Steven Spielberg‘s classic 1975 thriller Jaws features, of course, a number of memorably shocking shark attacks — poor Chrissie Watkins (Susan Backlinie) going for her ill-fated night swim in the film’s opening minutes; little Alex Kintner (Jeffrey Voorhees) getting eaten while out on his inflatable raft; the guy in the estuary (Ted Grossman) getting swamped from his boat and devoured by the creature in one of the audience’s first glimpses of its head; Quint’s (Robert Shaw) horrific demise after the shark breaches the Orca.
There is also the scene where Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) finds Ben Gardner (or at least his head) at the bottom of his boat, which has clearly been attacked by the shark; what is unclear is whether the shark directly killed Ben or if the fisherman just drowned while trying to hide, with the shocked expression left on his face still apparent after being picked apart by scavenger fish. And there’s the near-miss scene when two guys hoping to claim a reward for the shark try to bait it with a holiday roast, throwing the bait off a pier, which leads to one of the film’s more suspenseful moments, even if the humans make it out okay.
There is one scene in Jaws, though, that is just as horrific as the more graphic, outright attacks while also maintaining the unseen or little-seen sort of suspense that Spielberg brought to the first part of film in scenes like the Gardner discovery and the “pier incident.”
Screenshot: youtube.com/@reblok92
That scene involves poor little Pipit, a black Labrador retriever first seen during the terrific sequence on the beach leading up to the Kintner attack, when Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) — still convinced a shark is out there following the Watkins death even if city officials are forcing him to keep the beach open — sits at the shore carefully surveying the scene and keeping an eye out for potential problems.
There is an array of beachgoers doing everything from throwing a football in the water and relaxing in an inner tube to, of course, swimming. Trying to monitor all the action gives Brody (and the audience) a few false starts as he, for example, briefly mistakes the top of a swimmer’s bathing cap as a shark’s dorsal fin.
Spielberg also gives us some anticipatory dread with underwater shots of the beachgoers’ legs under the water; but even by this earlier point in the film, we (kind of) know that we are not seeing the shark’s point of view at those points, because we are not hearing any of John Williams’ ominous Oscar-winning musical score.
One of the beachgoers is a young man playing fetch with Pipit the dog, who eagerly splashes around in the water again and again, happily bringing the stick back to her person for another throw into the sea.
Just when things might seem for us (and Brody) to be just another day at the beach, Spielberg suddenly shows us a shot of Pipit’s stick just quietly floating in the water, with no dog in the area and no playful splashing to be heard. Anyone owning or even just knowing a little about fetch-crazy dogs like Pipit likely gets an instant sense of unease here.
Screenshot youtube.com/@reblok92
That unease grows as the dog’s owner frantically scans the beach looking for his suddenly missing pooch, calling out “Pipit? Pipit?” much as Kintner’s mother would soon be calling out “Alex? Alex?” He’ll also regret throwing that last stick every bit as much as Mrs. Kintner will regret letting Alex go out for “just 10 more minutes.”
The bad feeling viewers get is justified, as we go from the shot of that lonely, bobbing stick to more underwater shots, which this time are accompanied by Williams’ score. Seconds later comes the memorable scene where Alex Kintner is attacked on his raft, leading to beach chaos.
Here’s some of that incredible scene at the beach, including some of Pipit’s moments:
Within a few minutes during this sequence, both a dog and a boy become victims (while Pipit is not explicitly shown being gotten by the shark, it is strongly implied), showing that no one is safe at this beach.
That sequence also shows that no one is safe in this movie; if any viewers thought that Jaws wouldn’t dare have a kid or animal become victim to a man-eating fish, they were proven very wrong early on. An older Spielberg may not have included scenes like the Pipit and Kintner moments in later films; the kids in 1993’s Jurassic Park make it out physically okay, albeit very emotionally distressed, for example. But then again, in 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park, one scene makes it very clear that the T. rex has chomped on a family dog during its San Diego rampage, so the director still had a bit of the brutal, take-no-prisoners approach there that he brought to Jaws.
Because the Kintner death that follows it, and the Watkins death that precedes it, remain so memorable, it might be easy to forget Pipit the dog’s fate, sandwiched between the other two in a more subtle presentation but representing an equal amount of horror. Pipit’s disappearance sets up the Kintner scene and helps prep the audience for realizing that an idyllic beach day is going to quickly turn into a sunlit nightmare.
It might also be easy to forget Pipit because the dog is not shown being attacked (mercifully, we are spared any shocking whimpers or cries from the dog; it is hard enough listening to Kintner’s gurgling screams as he is dragged into the bloody depths).
Showing the dog’s death might have even been seen by at least a few audience members as more horrifying and unacceptable than the boy’s; it sure seems like there are a number of folks who get more outraged when animals are treated violently than when people are.
Remind Moviegoers in 1975 had no warning that a dog would be a victim (I don’t even recall a dog getting it in the original Jaws novel).
Today, of course, people who nervously think that a movie like Jaws might even have a remote chance of featuring a scene with violence toward an animal can visit the Does the Dog Die? website for spoilers to save themselves from feeling traumatized during certain scenes (I think that over the years, this site has been expanded to include more than just dogs).
Looking up Pipit on this site, there seems to be a consensus among commenters that Pipit did die at the hands (or jaws) of the great white.
Going further down the Pipit rabbit hole to other sites leads to happier information about the real-life dog, who was also named Pipit (for a long time, I thought the dog’s name was “Pipin,” since that’s how I seemed to hear it whenever I saw the movie). She was among the many locals from the Martha’s Vineyard area recruited for the film to play memorable characters who helped give Jaws so much of its verisimilitude, even if they were only onscreen briefly.
Thankfully, this pooch was never in danger during her memorable movie moment, and was safe and sound after filming. At The Daily Jaws, for instance, you can read a bit about Pipit’s role in Jaws, one of the highlights of her all-too-brief life (Pipit apparently passed away at a relatively young age, unfortunately; she lived about nine years, circa 1969-78).
facebook.com/TheDaily Jaws
Easing the horror of poor Pipit’s fictional fate even more is the video below (again from The Daily Jaws), which includes some humorous behind-the-scenes details from the guy playing Pipit’s stick-thrower (a young man named Steven Potter, who was billed in the film as “Man With Dog” and was the son of the dog’s real-life owners) about how, when he was supposed to be searching for his missing dog and calling out her name, the real-life Pipit was just off-camera barking back in reply, as if to say, “Here I am! When are you gonna throw that stick again???”