Still Not a Best Friend

I believe a pit bull telephoned me the other day. If it wasn’t a pit bull, it was the way a pit bull would sound. There was subdued rage in the voice and a mindless tension stretched to the breaking point. One could easily imagine the words transformed into a low growl.

The dog was chillingly clever, the way humans are who suffer from severe dementia. Someone a little off his rocker can sound pretty convincing when he tells you about his trip to Venus aboard an alien spacecraft.

The pit bull manifested its cunning by identifying itself not as a dog but as a dog owner.

It left a message on my answering machine that said, “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. We got a right to own any kind of dog we want and (expletives) like you won’t change that.”

He didn’t leave his name, though one assumes it would have been something like Mauler or Slasher. I doubt there are many Spots and Rovers among pit bulls.

The call was in response to a column last week which, in effect, challenged the right of anyone to own a dog that kills people.

Pit bull apologists wrote and telephoned by the dozen. Not one of them mourned the death of Marjee Lilly, who was killed by dogs the day before.

Instead, they defended the breed by pointing out the two dogs that ripped her arms to shreds in South Central L.A. were only part pit bull.

They disputed my accuracy by arguing that pit bulls were bred to fight bulls and bears, not other dogs, as though that made a difference.

They said pit bulls aren’t inherently dangerous, owners make them dangerous. Dogs don’t kill people. People kill people. A man, his pit bull and his Uzi are, by God, the American way.

I wrote about my own dog in the same column. Hoover, I said, serves no useful purpose. He doesn’t bark at strangers, bring in the newspaper, do tricks at parties or romp with me.

Hoover was a metaphor for dogs that don’t kill, but you have to have an IQ of at least 97 to understand metaphors.

Remarkably, many of the calls and letters concentrated on the necessity to train Hoover, rather than to curtail pit bulls. One said I ought to illustrate the tricks I would like him to perform by performing them myself first.

“Throw a stick,” a teacher (a teacher!) wrote, “and fetch it while Hoover watches. You’ll be amazed how quickly he will learn!”

I would be even more amazed to find myself running down the road with a stick in my mouth and dropping it at Hoover’s feet.

A caller left a message that suggested my attitude toward animals would sweeten if I saw the movie “Bambi” or “The Little Mermaid.”

As it turns out, I have seen them both, and while I remain neutral on wet-eyed fawns that frolic in the forest, I am suspicious of a prince, however well-intentioned, who falls in love with a mutated fish.

Among those who identified themselves was one Richard Pierce. He wrote angrily, “How about if he (Hoover) learned to kiss your opinionated behind?”

Humorist and ex-newsman Paul Golis sent me a cartoon. A man with a giant dog is telling a friend, “He loves people. But mostly he gets canned food.”

W.C. Fields said, “There is no question as to whether whiskey or the dog is man’s best friend. When two kindred souls get together for a friendly session, do they sit there and pet dogs?”

Fields was a very funny man, but he died of whiskey, not dogs, and probably should have spent more time petting than drinking.

I say that in modest defense of canis familiaris , who has been man’s best friend for roughly 14,000 years. Not all of them kill.

Some, like Hoover, are simply there, but who knows to what heights he might rise on my behalf? We may sing of that languorous old mutt someday as The Little Dog That Did.

Others are born famous, achieve fame or have fame thrust upon them. Lassie, Benji, Asta, Fala and Checkers come to mind. Dogs that rescue children, thwart bank robberies, drink martinis, charter airplanes or soften the image of hard men in high office.

Then there are pit bulls.

No one in his right mind ought to defend ownership of an animal that kills, whether it’s a dog or a tiger shark in a swimming pool.

Those who do have more problems than the dog.

An example is the caller who maintained in skewed logic that pit bulls aren’t bred to kill, but to fight. The death of an opponent is simply “a circumstance of the situation.” God’s will, as it were.

I’m sure Marjee Lilly and the family that mourns her would be comforted to know her painful death was not premeditated and certainly not intentional.

It was just one of those things.