TABLE TALK
Would you carry someone else's child? Discuss the ethics of artificial
insemination and other non-traditional fertility methods in Table Talk.
- - - - - - - - - -
RECENTLY
Escape from parenting
Toying with us
Bringing up baby
A thin line between mother and daughter
Talking to strangers
- - - - - - - - - -
Mamafesto |
I bent over Sadie, who was frantic, whining, trembling, panting. And I was panting too. I ran my hands through her fur looking for blood, but there was only a thick Jurassic coating of saliva on her neck and back. The long-haired man sat 10 feet away, holding down the dog, who could not have looked sweeter, his head cocked with curiosity, like what were we going to play next? Kill the kitty? All of us were panting -- the street heroes, both dogs and me. The pit bull was not wearing any tags, and none of us knew what to do. I thought about Sam, imagined him trying to pull the dog off Sadie, which he would have tried to do. I shuddered. Then we all started talking about pit bulls. Pit bull owners always explain how really docile the breed is; how 99 percent of them make wonderful family pets. Well, a lot of us -- 99 percent of us -- don't actually consider them to be pets. They're not even watchdogs -- they don't bark. They just kill things. So here's what I want to know: Why do you need to own one of these weird unpredictable raptor jump-dogs? Have you ever heard of a golden lab that chewed through a fence to get at a toddler? I am going to get letters from pit bull owners whining about what great animals pits are, and this in advance is my response: Thank you so much for sharing. Why didn't you get a dog that's nice? Why did you go and buy Cujo? What kind of person brings a pit bull into a neighborhood where every other house has kids living there? Why, if you want a pet, would you pick one who mostly behaves itself but can have one fluky little bad day, and on that bad day kill a child? Let me tell you what happens when Sadie has a bad day: She sneaks up on my bed when I go out, and she sheds. Bad dog, Sadie! After a while, the delivery woman had to go -- I suppose she had to deliver the box she'd conked the dog on the head with. Finally the long-haired man and I tied the dog up outside his house, and I took Sadie home. She was still shivering and her eyes were terrorized. At my house, I wrote a note to the dog's owner -- I assumed he had one, because he had a fancy collar on. I included my name and number, and put it in a plastic sandwich bag, and walked back to where the dog was tied up. He was very glad to see me. I was no longer afraid of him. For some reason, I just assumed he was no longer in attack mode. He licked my hand as I taped the sandwich bag to his collar. I went back home, called Sadie's vet and made an appointment to bring her in. Then I called the Humane Society and told them that my dog had been attacked by a pit bull, who was now tied up just down the street. They said they'd sent someone to pick him up. Sadie spent the day being treated for shock, and one badly abraded patch of skin. I spent the afternoon trying to decide whether or not we should move. There are actually two pit bulls in the neighborhood, because Sam is friends with the boy who owns one of them. The boy keeps explaining how sweet their dog is, how sweet most pit bulls are, and I've always let Sam play there before, because he and the boy do their homework together, and I like this kid's family. But now I feel more anxious. What I am going to say next time he wants to go over? "Here honey, don't forget your binder paper -- and the pepper spray." I'm very angry with pit bull owners. You have 100 great breeds of dog to choose from, and you pick the one bred to kill? "OK kids, time to decide -- I say we go with the beagle. No, wait, never mind -- let's get the pit bull." You get a pit bull only because you want to detonate a sense of fear in others, and you do: When we see your dog, we take our children to the other side of the street, we take them out of the park. And I think it's a chickenshit thing to do, to get other people to feel your fear for you. Anyway. Later that day a woman from my neighborhood came up to me at the market and told me she'd heard the commotion out in the street. Then she told me two things: that the pit bull lived in the Nightmarcher house, and that when the animal control people came to take the dog away, a cop had shown up too. Then I got really afraid. I wished I had not left the dog's owner or owners a note with my name and phone number on it. I knew intellectually that the dog's owners are probably perfectly good people, but by then I was really spooked. I started to imagine answering the doorbell one night, but finding only a tall dark space, darker than the night; a people-shaped patch of darkness, moving things around on my porch like a little wind. However, the owners haven't called. When I got up the next morning, Sadie still seemed depressed and skittish, but I figured she'd be her old groveling geisha self in a few days. I figured we could stay in, chill out until then. But then my friend John Kaye called to see how she was doing. He calls her Said-ele. He seemed to be having a little vicarious guilt about the attack. When he was 12, his family lived down the street from Peter Lorre in L.A. and one awful day, John heard that cringey Germanic purr on the phone. Peter Lorre wanted to speak to John's father, because their German Shepherd had killed Peter Lorre's little Yorkie. The Yorkie wandered into the Kayes' front yard one night, and the Shepherd apparently had a little ... confusion. "Ate him right up," John told me once, but he said it mournfully. "Look," he said over the phone, "that pit bull's not going to get out again for a long time. You've never seen him before, right? And you've got to take Sadie for a walk this morning. You've got to put her back on the horse that threw her. However, by the same token," he added, "I would not go by that house without a tire iron." So I took Sadie for a walk, right past the house where the pit bull lives. What else was I going to do -- get her a treadmill? No, she's a tracker. She lives to walk along sniffing things. And, anyway, you just can't stay holed up. You've only got this one mongrel life, and you don't want to spend it hiding indoors; pretty soon the menace is everywhere and you're left worrying about what's going to rise up out of the basement. You have to wear down the fear. You can't kite yourself up over the places you wish did not exist. You have to suit up, show up, move on through. The good news is that the joy is on the other side of the dark stretch of sidewalk. Also, you can ask someone to walk along with you, someone or something you trust. So I decided to be that person for Sadie and help her take back her joy in the street.
I brought along my metal tennis racket. I felt a little foolish,
because it was drizzling, but I did it anyway. It must have been some other
monkey's birthday that day, because a slanted ray of light shone through the
murky clouds. Sadie began pulling on the leash in panic as we approached the
house where the pit bull lived. For the first time in ages, no one barked at
us. Things were perfectly quiet at the dark house. Sadie tugged me along,
tense as a rat. I felt a little helpless and scared, but I told her what a
brave dog she was, and how soon this trouble would pass. I had her leash in
my left hand, the racket in my right, and I walked along practicing overhead
smashes, just in case. I really got into it, finally, into these very bouncy
balletic Maria Buena overheads. Maybe it was a version of whistling past the
graveyard. Maybe it was what someone once said, that as long as you're
walking on thin ice, you might as well dance. But at any rate, half a block
past the house, Sadie finally slowed down to her usual doggy pace, and when
we'd gone a few feet more, she raised that sweet black head and joyfully
began to sniff the morning air.
Chew the fat about Anne Lamott in Table Talk. |
Arts & Entertainment | Books | Comics | Life | News | People
Politics | Sex | Tech & Business | Audio
The Free Software Project | The Movie Page
Letters | Columnists | Salon Plus
Copyright © 2000 Salon.com All rights reserved.
