Dogs Behaving Badly

In the case of Zelda vs. Babee--officially, City of Los Angeles case 97041WV--the defendant’s story appears to be a botched attempt at eat and run. And while Zelda narrowly missed becoming Shih Tzu on a shingle for the exuberant Babee, a 2-year-old Staffordshire terrier, Zelda’s owner wasn’t so lucky. As she waits with her attorney in the East Valley Animal Care and Control lobby, Zelda’s owner extends her right arm to show two nasty purple scars just above her elbow.

A complaint was filed and a summons issued, and today Zelda’s and Babee’s owners are in dog court. First Zelda’s owner and her attorney trudge in, then Babee’s people: a defiantly bored 16-year-old and her father. The conference room cum court is furnished with a tape recorder placed on a table, three rows of chairs and stacks of banker’s boxes with neatly printed labels: “Barking--P-Z,” “Biting--A-F.”

Hanging by a budgetary thread, L.A.’s Department of Animal Regulation holds these weekly administrative hearings at the department’s downtown and North Hollywood locations. Last year animal regulation conducted 6,004 investigations, a third of them barking dog complaints. Most of the cases are resolved informally. The remaining ones end up here before animal regulation officers trained in dispute resolution.

James Connelly, a 19-year department veteran and owner of birds, rabbits and tortoises, but no dogs, presides over this morning’s hearing. Today’s decision, he explains, will be based on a preponderance of evidence (thanks to the O.J. Simpson trial, everyone nods knowingly). Both sides have an opportunity to present their cases as well as cross-examine witnesses. Connelly asks everyone who will testify to be sworn in.

The father raises his hand, then turns to his daughter slouched in the chair next to him.

“Do I have to testify?” she whispers.

Wearily, he nods. She raises her right hand, sighing heavily.

“Ma’am, if you were shown a photograph of the dog that was in your yard in November of ‘96, do you think you could identify it?” Connelly asks Zelda’s owner, holding up Exhibit 2A: a Polaroid of a big red dog grinning broadly at the camera.

“Yes, that’s the dog,” she says.

The woman describes how a good deed--taking care of Babee when she jumped the fence into her yard and the dog’s owner could not be located--turned ugly when, having played good-naturedly with the woman’s son, Babee suddenly set upon tiny Zelda. All Babee got was a mouthful of fur, but somewhere in the melee Zelda’s owner was bitten.

Cross-examining the woman, the father inquires about Babee’s frame of mind.

“You say the kids were playing with the dog. At the time, did the dog show any attitude?” he asks.

“Let me stop you right there,” interrupts Connelly. “You cannot ask this person about the dog’s attitude. She has no way of knowing that.”

Next, the 16-year-old tells her side. Wagging her crossed leg, which sports a tattoo on the ankle, she responds to Connelly’s questions with venomous indifference.

“Let me get this straight,” Connelly says. “You own a Staffordshire terrier. . . You know this dog is also called a pit bull. You became aware in November of ’96 that the dog has the ability to leap off your property into your neighbor’s property and you’re saying that your reaction was, since this was the first time she had jumped a fence, she’d probably never do it again?”

“Yes.”

By the end of the hearing, the father and daughter agree to let a humane organization find a new home for Babee, and the teenager is made to understand she is not to bring home any more dogs.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Connelly observes afterward as he walks from the hearing room, “it never gets boring around here.”