On Friday I received a call from Robert, a homeless pit bull owner, who had been arrested, jailed for four months and was about to lose his dog “Boss” forever if I did not help, as he put it, “Right now!” I phoned him back immediately, but it was still after the shelter closed for the day, which was too late. Boss was scheduled to be euthanized on Saturday April 24th.
The only reason that the captain of the shelter had decided to hold on to Boss for four long months was because his owner had written eight letters, pleading with the Department of Animal Services to hold on to his beloved pit bull. This amazed me because the shelter is only required to hold any personal property dog, such as was the case with Boss’ impound, for thirty days. The DAS went to amazing lengths to hold on to him for an additional three months, even though Boss is not the coolest dog in town, temperament wise.
I spoke to Robert, heard his account of how the LAPD, for no good reason, forcefully took Boss from his Cadillac, smashed the windows and destroyed his personal property. This all went down in Hollywood, which is the service area for the North Central Animal Shelter. According to Robert, LAPD officers waited for two hours for an animal control officer to come and get Boss and take Robert to jail. The officer never showed up so LAPD delivered Boss to the shelter where he stayed for 120 days. According to Robert, Boss was never aggressive but the officer hit Boss with his Billy club and threatened to kill Boss if he became really aggressive.
I listened for about twenty minutes to Robert’s account of the day that he was arrested, how he had no money to get Boss out and the fact that this dog was his world. He had owned Boss since he was just a pup. Now almost two years old, from the Razor’s Edge Razor’s Edge line, he was a dog that he had planned to breed because, according to Robert, he had “a wonderful temperament and great confirmation”.
We agreed to meet at the shelter the following day. I warned Robert about the mandatory spay/neuter policy and advised him that Boss would probably not get out the shelter without being neutered. I knew that there was going to be trouble when he told me, “Miss, that’s just not something that I will allow. I’m prepared to let him go if I have to do that. I’m not going to fix my show dog.”
Fast forward to Saturday, he was right on time. We requested to start the paperwork to get Boss out when the bomb dropped. First, Boss was no longer his dog. After 30 days, the dog became the property of the department. If Robert was going to take Boss out, he would need to adopt him and for sure, this dog was going out neutered, a policy of the state of California. Robert was stunned and silent. The energy in the lobby was very dark.
Then, he began to raise his voice, an officer came out, then the captain who counseled him about the fact, there are just too many pit bulls, and legally, Robert had no choice. Finally, the words were said by the Captain, if you don’t get Boss out of here today or Downtown Dog Rescue doesn’t rescue Boss right now, which I didn’t plan on doing, he is going to be euthanized at 5:00PM. More heated words were exchanged and then Robert walked out. “I’ll let him go”, he yelled as he walked out of the lobby. No goodbye, no other explanation, just that he was going to let him die rather than take a neutered dog.
I stood there with a couple shelter volunteers wondering what the next move was. This was not a dog that I would consider taking into our rescue. While I would love to save every pit bull, I’m not insane. According to the animal control officers, who read the police report, Boss had tried to attack the LAPD officer.
When I looked at Boss in his run, he was a sad case, ears cropped closed to his head, like my Clancy, no eye contact with me at first, clearly a dog that had been in a run way too long and needed to get out. He was depressed, had lost a lot of weight and muscle mass, not a happy dog. One volunteer told me how difficult he was to control on a leash and how dominant he was towards other dogs and people at times.
With 14 years of working with dog owners like Robert, I knew to wait. I sat in the lobby another fifteen minutes, sure enough, he came back, heading straight for the kennel to go look at Boss. I followed. I tried to talk calmly to Robert, suggesting that he reconsider, when out of the sky came my angel, a volunteer doing community service who knew Robert, knew Boss since he was a puppy and was going to law school, stopped Robert and I and began talking what I refer to as “real talk”.
She counseled him like an attorney, saying all the right things. This opened the door for me to talk to Robert and for the first time since our initial conversation on Friday, he was listening to what I had to say. At the end of the conversation it was decided, he would not let Boss die, he would adopt his dog, sparing his life. He was going to picket City Hall, write more complaints, but he wasn’t going to let Boss die with a needle in his neck, thrown into a freezer.
We stood back in line to do the paperwork necessary to get Boss out. Boss will be neutered today and Robert will pick him up from the animal hospital that performed the surgery, then he will be in our program Operation Safety Net for the rest of Boss’ life. Boss now has a “family,” DDR to watch out for him. Since he is microchipped, in the event that he ever does end up in the shelter system again, Downtown Dog Rescue will bail him out, board him, keep him safe until his owner can be reunited with his dog.
Robert signed the paperwork but he did add in his own line, “I don’t want my pet fixed” before he signed all the releases, showing his prison ID as his only source of personal identification. A 50 year old black man, with no money, no permanent place to live, no job, and a pit bull is a tough case. He is supposed to get his Cadillac out of the impound today, putting the pieces back together that make up his life. I gave Robert $100 as we said goodbye at the shelter. The money will buy him his California ID, some clean clothes, some dog food for Boss and anything else that he might need to bring some normalcy to his hectic existence.
Of course, I had big Clancy dog with me, we walked out of the shelter together, thinking, this could have been Clancy’s owner, a Dog Man who raised pit bulls, loved them, in a different way, but would also rather see one of his dogs die than to neuter the dog. This time, it wasn’t the case, Boss was more than just a stud dog, money maker, status symbol in the neighborhood, he is Robert’s pet not his pit.
