Puppy Love : Baby, Recovered From Brutal Beating, Goes to a New Home

When Baby’s first owner savagely beat the wide-eyed cocker spaniel puppy on the balcony of a Glendale apartment last June, animal lovers throughout Southern California were outraged.

One of them was Helen Namba, Baby’s new owner, who picked up the dog late last week at a Sylmar animal hospital. She promised to treat her new charge a bit differently.

“I’m the silly kind” of pet owner, said Namba, of La Canada Flintridge, who adopted Baby after the previous owner received a jail sentence. “I cook chicken breasts for dogs--boneless, of course. I buy ground round and cook that and mix it with kibble. . . . I have a great big yard so she’ll have lots of fun. I have no other pets right now.

“She will be the queen.”

Baby received a royal send-off Friday at the Collett Veterinary Clinic, where staff members had nursed the injured pup back to health.

“Despite all the mess she makes, it’s going to be rough to see her go,” said Eric Sweetland, a 22-year-old kennel assistant.

“I used to share my lunch with her,” said Marianne Lowrie, the clinic’s accountant. “She loves apples and tomatoes. I bring my lunch in a little ice chest. I’d open the lid, and she’d grab the first bag she could find.”

In her new home, Baby will slip away from the intense public attention that has followed her since June 30, when Glendale authorities found her with three broken ribs and a broken pelvis.

Neighbors had called police after seeing Brendan Sheen, 26, repeatedly kick and jump on his little dog. Sheen told investigators he was disciplining the puppy and “just got carried away” after she bit his finger.

During the next five months, Baby’s case sparked an emotional outpouring that stunned even longtime animal advocates:

* After television stations and newspapers showed close-ups of the stitched and bandaged canine, hundreds of people offered to adopt her.

* Animal lovers donated about $15,000 to the Doris Day Pet Foundation in Sun Valley, which paid Baby’s hospital bills.

* Baby’s boosters attended Sheen’s court appearances and wrote letters to the judge, urging severe punishment.

Last month, Sheen, who faced a maximum of three years in state prison, pleaded guilty to felony animal cruelty after Pasadena Superior Court Judge Terry Smerling promised him no more than 45 days in County Jail.

On Nov. 20, Smerling handed down Sheen’s sentence: 30 days in jail, 100 hours of community service in an animal shelter and three years’ probation. He must pay restitution for Baby’s hospital bills, and he cannot own or possess a pet during his probation period.

Sheen lost his job at a Carson freight company and his home because of the incident, his attorney said.

Animal advocates were pleased with the sentence.

“I think that Mr. Sheen has been through a lot of humiliation and bad times because of this,” said Judy Ruby, director of the Doris Day Foundation. “I hope this will be a deterrent to other people who don’t take care of their animals.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. JoAnn Glidden had argued for jail time.

“I thought that was appropriate,” the prosecutor said. “I know there’s no dead body, like in a shooting case. But I think a message has to go out to people that you can’t go around stomping on your pets.”

Still, the wide public outcry and the relatively harsh sentence raised eyebrows among some court watchers.

Several attorneys said Baby’s plight stirred far more attention and sympathy than many child abuse, or wife-beating cases.

And last week, some black leaders complained that Sheen received jail time for beating a dog, while a Korean-born Los Angeles grocer was sentenced only to probation for the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old black girl.

“I don’t think Mr. Sheen belongs in jail,” said Deputy Public Defender Ellen Blumenthal, who represented him. “I don’t see how his going to jail is going to act as a deterrent to future acts of animal abuse by other people.”

She said the beating was a spontaneous reaction after Sheen was bitten--not a carefully planned act of violence. The defense attorney favored more community service instead of jail time.

“Animal rights are worth fighting for,” Blumenthal said. “But I believe that the people who directed letters urging jail time in this case were completely blinded to the human element.”

She said Sheen is shy and quiet and anxious to escape the spotlight. The attorney insisted that Sheen is filled with remorse “and has been from the minute it happened.”

Even some of Baby’s most ardent supporters say the public response might have been less spectacular if she were not such a cute, photogenic, seemingly harmless animal.

“Abuse to animals is not uncommon,” said Dr. Robert Collett, the veterinarian who treated Baby. “It just so happened that this case caught the media’s attention. She really caught the public’s eye.”

Collett said that while Baby was recuperating, he also cared for a Rottweiler dog who escaped from a yard and was shot in the chest by a frightened neighbor. That case, he said, received no publicity.

The $15,000 in donations that arrived shortly after Baby’s beating is “long gone,” Ruby said. It was used to pay Baby’s bills and those of other ill and injured pets.

From among Baby’s many admirers, Ruby picked Namba, a retired Unocal personnel coordinator, to be the dog’s new owner. Namba attended all of Sheen’s court appearances after hearing about the dog-beating case.

“When I saw it on TV, I cried,” Namba recalled. “I went down to the Glendale police station the next morning to adopt the dog. They said: ‘Good luck, lady. I hope you get it, but there are 800 people ahead of you.’ ”

Namba and her husband, Ben, have raised several German shepherds, and a mixed-breed dog she rescued after a hit-and-run accident. The last of the dogs died two years ago.

When she heard about Baby, Namba decided she was ready to pamper another pet.

“Why not?” she asked. “I don’t have kids, and I can’t feed the whole world, so why not one dog?”

Ruby believes the abused cocker spaniel has found a perfect home.

“I think Helen’s just the logical choice,” she said. “Everything I’ve had in mind for this dog, she’s met. This is a nice ending to this.”