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The roots of all this go back around 10 years, when the first Los Angeles dog park formed at the top of Laurel Canyon. Many people in the Hollywood crowd live here, and celebrities quickly chose sides. The late Anthony Perkins complained that his wife and children were afraid to use the park because of the dogs. Artist David Hockney, whose much-painted dachshund, Stanley, used the Laurel Canyon park to exercise, defended the right of dogs to run free. "Whenever I run into David Hockney," Mike Woo, then a Los Angeles City Councilman, remarked wearily to me in the early days of the Laurel Canyon leash-free zone, "all I want to do is talk about art, and all he wants to do is talk about the dog park." The star-studded status of the Laurel Canyon park is not lost on those in less rarefied sections of town. "I don't take Chopper here anymore," said one of my Silverlake neighbors, an actress, about her boxer. "Over at Laurel Canyon ... well, you just meet a better class of dog." Silverlake, being Silverlake, does attract its share of weirdos. The other day, for instance, I realized that the extremely long-legged, skulking dog loping submissively away from the other dogs, who kept harassing it with "You're weird!" type barks, was actually a wolf. What sort of idiot would keep a pet wolf in the first place, let alone allow it to run free in public? The sort of idiot who, as it turned out, goes to the park sans shoes and shirt and with his hair in long, Nature Boy locks. Luckily, it was a very nice, polite wolf -- thus the rather sheepish loping -- but still. I was enjoying this my-dog's-better-than-your-dog feeling of superiority when it occurred to me that perhaps it was time to take my own dog, Linda, to meet celebrity dog trainer Matthew Margolis. Linda is a medium-sized, black and white dog, about 18 months old, with a shaggy beard and mustache distinctive of her large tribe of "Terrier X" (which is what the animal shelter, where I found her at the age of 3 months, had on the cage label). All in all, a very clever and wonderful dog, as good as -- no, better than! -- any movie star's dog. Among her many positive qualities: 1. She is completely housebroken. 2. She quickly learned how to use the dog door -- and so what if the cat figured out how to use it some three weeks earlier? 3. She is very good at obeying the command "Stay!" when I thread the no-pull halter through the no-pull collar -- never mind that the whole contraption is necessary because her furious pulling at the leash was damaging her trachea. 4. She hardly ever steals food anymore. OK, she will jump up on the table when I'm not looking and drink from my forgotten mug of coffee, and once she combined this with a cigarette butt she found in the garden, enveloping me in a rather nostalgic, shades-of-Louella Parsons scent as she took her usual flying leap onto my lap ... but at least she waits now till breakfast is over! 5. She jumps up on visitors somewhat less than she used to. But when we entered Margolis' office in West Los Angeles, Linda began shaking -- something she had never done before, not even at the vet's. It was very strange. What was she thinking -- the jig is up? Only, as it turned out, for me. "How do you discipline this dog?" Margolis asked. "Sometimes I yell, 'No!' but she doesn't listen ..." I began. "Never yell at your dog!" he said. He quickly put her through some paces, the famous Margolis personality test. "Never even raise your voice to a dog like this!" he added. "This is a submissive dog!" "But at home she seems pretty feisty ..." I began. "OK, well, you know what? If you were so good at this, you'd have the Catherine Seipp dog training school. The Catherine Seipp yelling-at-the-dog dog training business. But you don't. One of the problems here is you're the classic dog owner: 'But-but-but-but-but!' 'He's a good dog, but!' Do you feed your dog from the table?" "Uh ..." "Yes, you do. You spoil your dog. And you're the worst type of dog owner there is, because you're in denial: 'But officer, my son couldn't have committed that murder -- he gets A's in English!'" He dropped to the floor and began a torrent of high-pitched baby talk to Linda, who stopped shaking and apparently entered some sort of hypnotic trance, miraculously obeying every single command Margolis gave her. "Well," I sighed, tail between my legs, "can we say hello to Ulli before we go?" Margolis' own schutzhund, an enormous German shepherd, came out from behind his owner's desk and sniffed us politely. I was hoping that Ulli would show some sign of imperfection, like when he'd jumped up and put his paws on my shoulders in greeting the last time I'd seen him -- not the best dog manners, needless to say. "You know," I reminded Margolis, "he did jump on me before." "Well, I should hope so," he replied suavely. "Nobody's perfect." An answer for everything! Well, that's why Margolis is top dog, of course. And I'm in denial and full of arguments, like the dog who returneth to his vomit, etc. In other words, just a mutt.
Catherine Seipp's Hollywoodland column appears every other Friday in Media Circus. |
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