‘Eat a dog, go to jail.’ : Have You Hugged Your Dog Today?

I am indebted to the widow of Sid the Squid for calling to my attention the dog problem in Canoga Park. What makes it unique is that this is not the usual complaint about dogs that bark all night or dogs that bite kids or dogs that knock over garbage cans. The dogs in this case are the victims, not the perpetrators. They’re being eaten.

This makes the widow of Sid the Squid furious. She loves animals as pets, not entrees, and is vowing to get to the bottom of reports that dogs are considered nothing more than the domesticated equivalent of walking pork chops among certain cultures represented in the Valley. “They not only round up the strays,” she said to me the other day, “they go to the animal shelter and bail out dogs to eat! For $22, they get 150 pounds of meat.”

Her real name is Barbara Toth. I call her the widow of Sid the Squid because she was married to the late Sidney Fabricant, a race track tout known as Sid the Squid for reasons apparently never made clear to anyone. When he died two years ago, the recorded voices of track announcers played over his casket, and racing forms were sprinkled on his grave.

Barbara’s involvement with dog-eating comes as a result of her association with Animal Lovers Legal Action Humane Society, which she founded.

Callers complained they suspected a Chinese family was eating strays in the neighborhood and they were fearful their own pets would be eaten. Cats were not being bothered.

“Dogs are considered a delicacy in China,” Barbara said, by way of explaining why the felines were spared. “Cats are just a meal.”

Oh.

She realizes that what one eats is based on cultural tradition, and while she finds the tradition personally disgusting, they can eat their dogs if they want to.

“I’m talking about dogs raised for meat, not dogs raised as pets,” she adds quickly. “No one ought to eat something that loves you.”

A potential problem lies in the inclination of trendy Southern Californians to adopt whatever food happens to be popular at the moment.

There is no law in the state that says you can’t eat dog, and, if the practice of dining on gourmet puppy catches on, it could be a real trouble for man’s best friend. Look what sushi bars have done to fish.

I’m not sure how I feel about eating dog. It’s probably safer than eating watermelons or cheese.

I think I dined on dog once with a family in Korea, but I was so tired of C-ration hash that I didn’t care. I suspected that the Marines put dogs in the hash anyhow, so whether I ate them out of a can or mixed with greens was inconsequential.

I talked to Dyer Huston, who is spokesman for the County Animal Regulation Department. He said they haven’t had any complaints about dog-eating for about a year.

“For a while, there were rumors that new immigrants from Southeast Asia were eating them,” Huston said, “but we couldn’t find any proof.”

Then he volunteered the information that he ate baboon in Ethiopia during the Second World War.

“The first time was by mistake,” he said, “but the second time I ordered it on purpose.”

It was cooked in an Italian ragout sauce, Huston recalled in a kind of wistful tone. He has not had it since the war because you just can’t get good baboon ragout in this country.

Four years ago, Fontana adopted a measure that made it unlawful to slaughter “any horse, mule, burro, pig, dog or cat” within the city limits without first obtaining a permit and posting a bond.

City Clerk Pat Murray, trying her best to maintain official decorum, said she thought the statute was adopted because someone was caught barbecuing a pony in the backyard.

The widow of Sid the Squid wants a state law that would forbid anyone to eat any domestic animal. She calls it her “Eat a dog, go to jail” crusade.

Animal-lovers tried to get the law through in 1981. Emotions ran high in Senate hearings. A dog named Ringo licked the legislators. A sign around his neck said, “I’m for loving, not eating.”

“In a country where Rin Tin Tin and Lassie are given the status of human beings, the barbecue of Benjie is tantamount to murder in the first degree,” one senator said. But the measure lost anyhow.

If Asians want to eat dogs in California, they can. So long as it’s their own dog. You can’t eat your neighbor’s dog.

“It’s disgusting,” Barbara Toth said, her own three dogs near her in the living room. They observed her with admiration. “A loving pet is not a walking dinner! I’m beginning to wonder now how many dogs are cooked at Chinese restaurants!”

Notwithstanding the possibility of dog foo yong, I’m not worried. We eat cows, pigs, chickens, rabbits and God only knows what other kind of animal. There are roughly 30 million dogs in the United States. That’s plenty to go around.

But I admire the widow of Sid the Squid anyhow. Fighting for the health and safety of any living creature is an honorable cause, even though she’s not likely to win.

Too bad, Barb. It’s a dog-eat-dog world.