The Dog Stops Here

When I was in kindergarten, my favorite song was, “Bow wow wow, whose dog art thou, little Tommy Tucker’s dog, bow, wow, wow.” I sang it so often that it drove my mother bonkers, and I was forced to sit out on the porch and sing it, which I did, fortissimo. But I don’t sing it anymore.

To begin with, it is no longer my favorite song and, more important, Tommy Tucker no longer owns the dog. In today’s world, little Tommy’s puppy is not his chattel but his animal companion and he its guardian. I’m not even sure we’re supposed to call them dogs anymore.

The movement began last year in San Francisco, where all strange movements begin, and culminated recently in Boulder, Colo., where it would be nice if all strange movements ended. But that is not to be. The animal-companion advocates are about to descend on L.A. like a pack of dingo dogs.

Veterinarian Elliot Katz was the first to publicize the idea that humans do not own animals. He told a San Francisco Commission on Animal Control that ownership is an offensive term that reduces animals to the level of disposable property. Dogs are companions, he sang, and should be treated as such.

His logic was compelling to the extent that it is unlikely one would, say, whack one’s companion with a newspaper for urinating on the rug, but it falters when you stop to think that a real companion wouldn’t do that in the first place.

The issue remains in limbo in San Francisco, but in Boulder, the City Council, lobbied by activists, voted to replace the word “owner” with “guardian” in official documents relating to animals. So now, heady with victory, the apostles of animalia are looking toward L.A.

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I have become aware of all this through a packet of information sent me by a Marin County-based organization known as In Defense of Animals, or IDA. Its campaign is called “They Are Not Our Property, We Are Not Their Owners.” Or TANOPWANTO.

God knows why they have involved me in this. I lean toward the dog-is-a-dog school of thought. Anything that steals a pot roast off the kitchen sink and drinks out of the toilet is a dog, not a friend.

Katz, whose very name drips with feline symbolism, compares TANOPWANTO with the suffrage movement, which gave women the vote. Before that, you might recall, women were forced to endure the humiliation of periodic flea baths and had to be walked frequently.

Russell Tenofsky, who is national coordinator of the TANO etc. campaign, assures me that there is a “community base” for the movement in Southern California. Since there is a community base here for everything from human levitation to past life regression, I don’t doubt him at all.

Tenofsky cites a memo by L.A.’s animal control czar, Dan Knapp, that encourages his staff to use the term companion in reference to one’s pets, and guardian in reference to a companion’s owner. I mean a companion’s guardian.

How this will apply to cows and pigs, I have no idea. We raised rabbits during the Depression, but I didn’t regard them as pets because we ate them. Peter Rabbit was never a fairy tale creature in our family. He was dinner.

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Jackie David, a spokeshuman for L.A.’s Animal Services, says that they have no immediate plans to lobby the City Council to do what Boulder did. The purpose of Knapp’s memo is simply to promulgate the idea that dogs and cats are part of the family and not something you can discard at will. Or eat.

Even though I am a dog-is-a-dog advocate, I am not going to sit here and encourage the disparagement of animals in any way. As Ogden Nash once wrote, “I hope my tongue in prune juice smothers/If I belittle dogs or mothers.” The idea of ingesting prunes in any form is enough to frighten anyone into submission.

However, I must point out that while L.A. is open to any goofy idea that comes down the Hollywood Freeway, those of us who toil for the L.A. By God Times are no longer inclined to kiss your Pekingese, if you know what I mean.

We are now owned by the Broad Shoulders people from Chi-Town, hog butcher for the world, who refuse to tippy-toe around those who believe that the IQ of a dog is only slightly lower than that of the average American.

In other words, if the secret agenda of the TANOPWANTO campaign is to give animals the vote, I’ve got to tell them that L.A. isn’t the animal farm. It’s bad enough we allow gun nuts and Texans to vote, much less their bloody animal companions. To paraphrase Harry Truman, the dog stops here.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com.