A Status Symbol With Real Bite

I counted eight big dogs on a recent stroll down the Venice Boardwalk, several of which were adorned with studded leather accouterments, including a spiked collar. Their masters--mostly bulked up guys with tattoos--were similarly decorated.

Three of the big dogs were Rottweilers, four were mutts heavily leaning toward the pit bull persuasion, and one was a mastiff. Right, a mastiff. Something I thought existed only in Sherlock Holmes stories.

To be specific, it was a Neopolitan mastiff, as I later learned. For those of you who haven’t seen a Neopolitan mastiff, it is a hulking (110 to 150 pounds average) blue-gray creature with a face that the great accordionist Flaco Jimenez could solo on. It looks like something Dracula might want to play “fetch” with. Beelzebub’s best friend.

As I marveled at this creature, it hit me: Where have all the doggies gone?

Nobody was walking collies, terriers, shelties or dachshunds. In their place were things that looked like Minotaurs and small bears. Slavering mongrels so gruesome that they looked like they had been concocted by Ray Harryhausen for one of those Sinbad movies. Cerberus at the gates of Hades.

And they are everywhere: in parking lots, glaring through the tinted windows of every third Range Rover, Cherokee and four-by-four; chained up and angry in back yards; jogging menacingly through Griffith Park.

Is it a conspiracy? Is it mere coincidence that Jay Leno’s production company is called “Big Dog”? Is this just his wife’s pet name for her big, lovable puppy dog Jay--or is it an insidious coded wink of approval to all who covet formidable canines?

Obviously, some people are procuring big dogs for protection and security--reasons that, sadly, are easy to understand. But a lot of the owners I’ve seen look pretty secure already. They’d look right at home on “American Gladiators” so I can only think that they flaunt their dogs as fashion statements--as plumage, symbols of status, even virility. Rolexes with teeth.

A woman friend put it more psychoanalytically: “These guys with their big dogs,” she says, “they’re all walking their (insert word here for male sex organ).” (Just what this implies about women walking dainty, perfumed little teacup poodles is open to speculation.)

To be fair, the Neopolitan mastiff on the Venice Boardwalk was peaceable--that is, until meeting another big dog, at which point both beasts strained mightily at their leashes in efforts to have meaningful physical contact. Somehow, I got the idea that this contact could easily have bypassed the nice-to-sniff-you stage.

What was even more nerve-racking, however, was that they showed their teeth to one another and their muscles bulged ominously through their skin until veins stood out on their necks--not the dogs, but their owners. Yes, the masters seemed to relish the encounters.

They appeared to thrill at the sight of their very own personal, obedient living hunk of murderous looking meat snarling and lunging at someone else’s very own personal, obedient living hunk of murderous looking meat. And the more fearful the passers-by, the more the owners seemed to prolong the doggy tete-a-tete.

Watching this made me think again of my woman friend’s statement, and brought to mind that old KEN-L Ration jingle, “My dog’s bigger than your dog.”

I admit I might not have even noticed all the big dogs had I not recently had meaningful contact with one of them--a Rottweiler or a “Rott,” as fans call them.

It happened in Taiwan, where I was visiting an unfinished building in which a friend owns a condo. Trying to find a way in, I opened a door into a huge dark room. From a far corner came a strange scratchy sound. Then came guttural grunts and a low, rolling growl.

As I bounded wildly back into the daylight, yelling at my friends, “Get in the car!” I turned to catch a glimpse not of Michael Douglas--but of a lumbering Rott drunk with the prospect of sinking his fangs into the femur of some fresh human.

I figure I lived to talk about this because the dog had already eaten. The old man who was guarding the premises with this “pet” burst outside, screaming at my friends: “That foreigner came in and tried to hit my dog” and further offered that we were all “pigs.”

I tried, in broken Chinese, to assure him that we were not pigs, and made a mental note about possibly skewed powers of perception among big-dog owners. Not surprisingly, I have had occasional nightmares since, starring my Chinese Rottweiler.

My dreams also have been inhabited by the pit bull mix that lived near my home for several years. One of those horrific tiger-striped variations, this creature would maniacally charge at me on sight. If the owner had not held fast the dog’s tether, I’d probably be typing with my toes my now.

This dog would spot me walking out of my apartment, from across the street, then instantly leap and strain in hopes that just this one time, it might get a taste of a free-lance writer. While it’s true that I have had similar experiences in the past, they have all been with editors, most of whom couldn’t run as fast and had duller teeth.

Because big dogs now seem to be a part of my life--my very dream life--and life in the big city, I set out to learn about them and their owners.

I read part of a book titled, economically enough, “The Rottweiler,” by one Richard F. Stratton. The Rott, I learned, owes its name to the town of Rottweil in southern Germany. Some sources say Rotts were taken there by conquering Roman armies using them as “war dogs,” guards and beasts of burden.

If called upon to be a “man-stopper,” Stratton wrote, there is none better than the Rott. Still, he insisted, the Rott needs “encouragement” to become an attack dog. The author also furnished this helpful hint for Rott owners: “It is very important when you have a canine protector that he not bite or frighten the wrong people.”

Somehow, Stratton’s Rott just didn’t impress me as a nice pooch. And I don’t have confidence that owners--especially those with tattoos of laughing skulls on their pectorals--might select the “right” people for their “canine protectors” to bite or frighten.

Still seeking reassurance, I phoned a big dog’s master--my friend, Jim, who has an 8-year-old, mostly white, pit bull mix named, of all things, Miss Havisham (after the pale character in “Great Expectations”). Jim does not have muscles like the Michelin Tire Man, and does not decorate Miss Havisham with spiked collars. He said she has always been a good watchdog with a nice disposition.

Like most big-dog owners, Jim swears that a dog’s temperament depends entirely on how it is raised. And, as for those muscle-engulfed guys parading around their muscle-engulfed canines, Jim said, “Obviously, they are making up for a deficiency in their personality.”

If this is the case, perhaps they might do well to take the advice of my woman friend.

“Send the most incorrigible war dogs back to police forces and armies, send the most stubborn guard dogs to fine estates in their ancestral homes where they can serve a function outside of being a walking hood ornament. Train the rest of them to herd sheep, rescue skiers, guide the blind or help the disabled. Then get all their former owners together and give each one a sweet little teacup poodle.”

Either that, or a nice big soup bone.