Leave it to the animal people to...

Leave it to the animal people to think of your dog on these steamy, sweltering days.

Capt. Barbara Fabricant, of the state Humane Task Force, says folks ought to let their pets stay indoors during the day. Being tied up out in the sun and high humidity could be fatal, she contends.

How would you like it?

Fabricant said a bowl of water doesn’t do it, because “whatever water they’re leaving is drying up.” She suggests filling the kids’ paddle pool and putting it where the dog can lie in it.

That, presumably, could be outside.

The captain is joined in all this by Edward Cubrda, executive director of the Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. He points out that dogs cannot perspire to cool off.

In case your dog does begin to breathe rapidly, walk with difficulty or show other signs of heat stroke, Cubrda recommends drenching it quickly with a hose and getting it to the vet.

A barmaid known to a Redondo Beach man only as “Cookie” is no one to argue with, his Torrance Superior Court lawsuit suggests.

William Harbaugh says the waitress in a Torrance bar named the Lama Room scratched his face, knocked him to the floor and traumatized him in a dispute that began when he complained that she brought one of his friends change for $10 rather than the $20 bill he had given her.

Cookie apparently is not particularly imposing physically. “If he can’t take a slap from a 5-foot-1, 53-year-old lady . . .,” said bar owner Robert Lillis. He declined to identify her further.

Lillis contended that Harbaugh started it all when he grabbed Cookie. He estimated that the plaintiff is eight inches taller than Cookie and 100 pounds heavier.

Although Harbaugh said in his suit that the waitress has a history of hostile and abusive behavior toward her customers, Lillis insisted that she is amiable and well-liked.

Cookie could not be reached for comment.

Lorie Good, visiting from Pennsylvania, knew she was in Southern California when she learned the name of a motorist who chased down a hit-and-run driving suspect and helped hold him for the cops.

His business card read Rob N. Hood .

The Thursday morning action began when a battered old pickup truck plowed into the rear of a car stopped for a light on Devonshire Street just off the San Diego Freeway in Mission Hills. The pickup truck, containing two men, sped away.

She said Hood, who had also been waiting at the light, took out after the truck, honking his horn and finally swerving in front of it to halt it. Officers arrived and took two men into custody.

Rob N. Hood, it turns out, is the name used by consultant Robert Neil Hood, 35, of Chatsworth.

Hood said he was not alone in holding the two suspects for police. He had help from another driver “who said he had had a brother killed by a hit-runner and a mother injured by one in a separate accident.”

And who was not about to let the two get away.

All the attention the Pony Tail Bandit got when he virtually posed for a TV camera while holding up a savings and loan office hasn’t done much to bring him to justice or even get him identified.

In fact, the FBI’s Fred Reagan said Friday, “We believe he robbed another Cal Fed at 9696 Wilshire Blvd. on Wednesday.”

Earlier that day, he sauntered into the Brentwood branch while a camera crew was there taping a segment for a syndicated show. He casually looked into the lens of the video camera, then showed the barrel of a pistol to a teller and walked out with some money that wasn’t his.

He pulled the job so smoothly that neither the TV crew nor the branch manager, standing nearby, realized what was happening.

Several of the homeless people on downtown Los Angeles streets have been seen recently wearing Sail America windbreakers, swears a Civic Center employee whose livelihood depends upon his powers of observation.

Either that, or the same jacket has been passed from person to person.

The Sail America folks, preparing for the defense of the America’s Cup against New Zealand in September, said in San Diego they have no idea how the windbreakers came to the streets of Los Angeles. “A lot of them were given out to VIPs and the media at the christening (of the Stars & Stripes catamaran in San Diego) on June 4,” one staff member noted.