In the John Wick movies, Keanu Reeves plays a retired assassin whose world crumbles when thugs kill his beloved beagle — the final gift from his dying wife. What follows is a blood-soaked revenge saga that spawned four films and counting, all because audiences immediately grasped what the villains didn’t: you don’t mess with someone’s dog.
The films work because they tap into something universal about the bonds many of us form with our four-legged family members. Strip away the designer suits and tactical gunplay, and John Wick is just a grieving man whose last connection to normalcy gets severed by people who can’t fathom what they’ve destroyed.
One worker in Alberta found himself living his own version of that heartbreak — minus the vengeance and murder but with the crushing weight of bureaucratic indifference instead. After a workplace accident left his right shoulder permanently damaged, he was forced to give away one of his three large dogs and may have to rehome the other two. Not because of violence, but because workers’ compensation decided dog walking isn’t a “medically necessary daily function.”
When fiction meets workplace reality
E.P.’s injury happened in an instant. A180-pound load he was carrying down steep stairs with a co-worker shifted, and his ability to control three large dogs on leashes vanished forever. The Workers’ Compensation Board covered his dog walking costs during recovery — a temporary measure. But once his restrictions became permanent, the cheques stopped.
This isn’t really about dogs, of course. It’s about the invisible threads that hold our lives together and what happens when workplace injuries cut them.
E.P. told the appeals commission his dogs were his “safety line,” particularly important given his PTSD. When he said losing the ability to walk them was “an ongoing reminder of his work-related handicap,” he captured something our compensation systems struggle to quantify: the psychological architecture of a life suddenly altered. Hollywood gets this. Legislators and adjudicators, apparently, do not.
The benefits blind spot
I’d guess that most of us have never seriously considered what would happen to the non-human members of our families if we suffered a catastrophic workplace accident. We plan for mortgage payments and medical bills, but not for the golden retriever who needs two walks a day or the elderly cat requiring twice-daily medication.
These creatures don’t appear on our benefits statements or emergency contact lists, yet for millions of workers, they’re as essential to daily functioning as coffee or sleep.
“We acknowledge the worker has lost the ability to walk his dogs on a permanent basis and that not being able to walk his dogs is an ongoing reminder of his work-related handicap, particularly given the worker’s evidence that ‘his dogs are his life,'” the commission wrote. Then they denied his appeal anyway.
Their reasoning wasn’t callous — it was logical within existing policy frameworks. E.P. was already receiving over $500 monthly for home maintenance and housekeeping services he could no longer perform. The system had done its job as designed. But perhaps that design needs some tweaking.
Ancient systems, modern wounds
Workers’ compensation emerged from an industrial age when work injuries were typically visible and physical, when a broken back meant you couldn’t lift heavy things, when recovery meant returning to a clearly defined before-state. The psychological and social dimensions of disability were afterthoughts, if they were thoughts at all.
But workplaces produce different kinds of damage. A software developer with chronic pain from repetitive strain might lose the ability to take their border collie on the long hikes that once provided mental relief. A warehouse worker with a back injury might find herself unable to lift a 70-pound Labrador into the car for vet visits. These aren’t one-off oddities — they’re predictable consequences of modern work and modern life intersecting badly.
The employer’s representative in E.P.’s case argued that covering dog walking would create inequities, forcing the system to subsidize “lifestyle choices.” It’s a reasonable concern that misses a deeper point: for many people, pets aren’t lifestyle choices any more than children or spouses are lifestyle choices. They’re family members with needs that don’t pause for workers’ compensation policy reviews.
Beyond policy manuals
Some employers already get this. Employers often offer pet insurance, emergency pet care services, even bereavement leave when animals die.
The real issue isn’t whether E.P. deserves dog walking coverage — though a case could be made that he does. The real issue is whether our injury compensation systems have evolved beyond their industrial origins to account for how people actually live.
For example, the commission’s suggestion that E.P. might benefit from “assistive aids like training with a certified pet behaviourist or an electronic collar.” This feels like the bureaucratic equivalent of telling someone with mobility issues to just try harder to walk. Sometimes the system can be modified to fit the person, but sometimes the person’s needs simply exceed the system’s imagination.
John Wick’s rampage was fiction, but the love that drove it was real. E.P.’s forced surrender of his dogs is non-fiction, and the love that makes it heartbreaking is equally real. The difference is that E.P. has no recourse except appeals courts that acknowledge his pain while denying his claim.
The man who gave away his dog because he couldn’t walk it anymore understood something his compensation system didn’t: some losses can’t be calculated in monthly allowances, and some needs can’t be neatly categorized as medical or personal.
They’re just human. And sometimes, they have four legs and unconditional hearts.
