Four Feet Tall and Rising

by Shorty Rossi

  It was my first experience dealing with dog trainers and behaviorists, and it became pretty clear, pretty fucking fast, that any idiot could say they were a dog trainer or a dog behaviorist. Most of them had no idea what they were doing. They’d send people to the pound with dogs that were “unfixable,” “untrainable,” or “hopeless,” which just wasn’t true. Any dog is fixable, unless they have a neurological problem. Just like a human. If one trainer isn’t able to help, it doesn’t mean a dog needs to be euthanized. As far as I’m concerned, I have a no-kill policy when it comes to all animals. Except tarantulas. I hate tarantulas. You can kill those things if you want.

  I was so adamant about my no-kill policy that I even protected a dog that bit me in the face. It happened at the pet resort. I was the one who handled the pit bulls, ’cause they were my favorites, and some of the other staff was scared to handle the breed, regardless of the fact that each dog had an individual personality. We were short-staffed that day and one of the girls asked me to get Duke and Daisy out of their pens. Their owners had arrived and were ready to take them home.

  Duke and Daisy were bullmastiffs, big dogs weighing over a hundred pounds each. They stood over two feet tall, so we weren’t exactly eye to eye, but I only had a couple of feet and maybe forty pounds up on them. But think about it. A four-foot-tall, 140-pound guy comes charging at you, you’re probably gonna laugh and take a swing at him. A three-foot-tall, 120-pound dog comes at you, you might have a different reaction. We humans aren’t so efficient at using our muscle mass the way animals are. That’s why I always carry a bat.

  It doesn’t mean big dogs are inherently dangerous. Every dog is a product of its environment. A reflection of its owner. Bullmastiffs are generally sweet-tempered, but Daisy had been known to be temperamental. You had to watch out for her. As I took them out of their pens, I figured I’d handle Daisy first and get the tough part over with. She started snarling and showing me her teeth, but I stayed firm and patient with her, and slowly got her collar around her neck.

  I never even saw Duke coming. Next thing I knew, Duke had most of my head in his mouth. He was holding tight and squeezing the shit out of me. I knew I’d be in big trouble if he started to shake me. He was big enough to break my neck. Somehow, I stayed calm. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a pipe near my foot. They were doing construction on some of the cages and had left materials lying around. I grabbed that pipe and started whacking the shit out of Duke until he let me go.

  Before he could decide to take another taste, I rushed out of the holding area and closed the door behind me. I turned around and my coworker took one look at me. She started screaming like a teenager in a horror movie. I didn’t realize how much damage Duke had done. I had blood streaming down my face and skin hanging off. I thought she was gonna pass out.

  The owners were mortified and panicked that I was gonna report their dogs. I had no intention of reporting Duke. If I did, he would at best be quarantined, and at worst be put down. But the wound was deep, and I needed stitches, so I had to go to urgent care. The owners said to send them the bill, and my coworker drove me. The doctors sewed me up with eight stitches, and when they asked what happened, I told them, “I was out cleaning the roof. I slipped and fell and landed on some barbed wire and got messed up.” They knew I’d been bitten by a dog, but I stuck to my story, and Duke and Daisy went safely home.

  I wasn’t trying to protect my job. I wasn’t trying to protect the pet resort. I honestly wasn’t mad at Duke for being a dog, and I wasn’t gonna be responsible for his demise. A few stitches weren’t gonna kill me. I was fine.

  It was the first and only time that a dog ever bit me. It never happened again.

  It was a rough start for us in Vegas. I was booking a few entertainment jobs here and there. An appearance as an elf. A leprechaun. Mini-Me. The work wasn’t steady, and I was struggling financially. Allison and I decided to change the name of our company from Short Entertainment to Shortywood, in the hopes we could conjure up some of that Hollywood magic. But mostly, I spent hours hustling to land a gig in Salt Lake City or a gig in Miami. I just couldn’t seem to break into the Vegas casino circuit.

  Even with the clients that hired me, respect didn’t come easy. I worked with a client in Miami to book ten Oompa Loompas for his company’s holiday party. We’d been talking by phone for nearly two months, back and forth, to secure the contract, but when I arrived at the hotel, with all ten fully dressed Oompa Loompas and Ray in tow, the client walked up to Ray, shook his hand, and said, “Shorty Rossi, I’ve been waiting to meet you.”

  There I was, wearing a suit, with Ray all thugged out and everyone else dressed like a damn Oompa Loompa. I looked at him and said, “I’m Shorty Rossi.” The guy laughed in my face. He could not fathom that I was the one in control. He actually thought ’cause I was Little I must be stupid.

  That did it. I said, “You know what, I will eat this one. We’re leaving.” I loaded up my Oompa Loompas, and assured them they would get paid anyway. The guy totally panicked, but I didn’t care. I yelled, “Sue the shit out of me!” And we would have bailed, if he hadn’t offered to double our fees as an apology. I might have been offended, but I wasn’t an idiot. I took his check and headed back to Vegas, reminded that just ’cause I’d named the company Shortywood didn’t mean I was gonna be taken seriously as a real industry player. If I wanted to be seen as a businessman, it wasn’t enough to wear the suit, print a card, or even do a good job. I had to fight for every ounce of respect.

  Then, to top it all off, Ray got hooked back on crack, and was arrested for possession. He spent a few nights in lockup, tried to clean himself up, slipped again, and ended up back in holding. This went on three or four times, and every time he came back to the house, he promised me it wouldn’t happen again. I tried to believe him, but I knew where we were headed.

  You can’t force an addict to get off it until he is ready. Moving to Vegas had been a big mistake for Ray. I tried to convince him to go back to San Francisco, to be with his family, but he wouldn’t go back. I did my best to tolerate the situation, but living with seventeen dogs, two cats, and a crack addict, I was going nuts. After years of being best friends, I had to kick Ray out of my house.

  I sat Ray down for a serious talk. “Dude, I’ve gotta let you go. You’re always gonna be a person that was a huge part of my life. We’ve been together how many years? But I don’t need this. I got enough shit going on.” It was one of the hardest decisions I’d ever made, but Ray didn’t wanna grow up. He wasn’t shooting and robbing people anymore, but he just couldn’t stay off the pipe. Ray hated me for it. He thought I was the worst man in the world. He moved in with his girlfriend, a woman with five kids, and as far as I know, that’s where he stayed.

  Ray had been my wingman for years. Without him around, and with Jerry dead, I felt pretty lost. Never mind the practical day-to-day of life with the dogs. Ray and I had always split the responsibility. On my own, I was overwhelmed. I hired a neighborhood kid named Dante to help, and I put the puppies up for sale. I didn’t understand that breeding and rescuing were at cross purposes. I thought I could do them both. I took over Ray’s room for use as my bedroom, and made the rest of the house a dog sanctuary. Sanctuary is the wrong word. I was hoarding pit bulls.

  I had pits in the office. Pits in the extra bedrooms. Pits in the garage. I’d even air-conditioned the garage to keep the pits from roasting in the Nevada heat. I had twenty crates to hold the dogs that still needed to be socialized. The rest of the dogs were loose in the house. At one point, I was up to twenty adult pits and another twenty puppies. There was one puppy, a big guy for such a young pup, who always wanted his way, wouldn’t let me out of his sight, but was the single worst puppy I’d ever had. He could tear through drywall like it was rice paper. He’d literally eat through the walls of the house. He drove me insane, but for some reason, I loved him most of all. I named him Hercules.

  I was so deep in, I couldn’t see the forest for the
trees, until Sebastian came to visit. He’d flown out for a couple of nights to work a Shortywood gig, and to hang with me. The minute he walked into my house, he said, “It sounds like a pound in here.” I told him, “Stand to the side,” as I opened the sliding glass door, walked through the dining room, the living room, the hallway, and opened the dog door. There was a stampede of dogs, charging for the backyard. They all had to pee. Seb’s face turned white. He’d never been so scared in his life. He just looked at me. “How can you live with all these dogs?” It was a question I wouldn’t dare let myself ask. It was like an addiction. If a rescue group called me, looking for a home for a dog, I took them in. I couldn’t say no.

  I’d get calls from people in nearby towns. “Come help this dog!” One call led me to a group of pit bulls that had been fought. They’d been left in an abandoned backyard to die. There were five of them, and they were mangled, bleeding, ripped apart. They’d been zapped with electrical prods or stun guns. They’d been beaten and were near death. One of the dogs died in Debbie’s arms. There was nothing we could do. I called the vet I worked with at the pound and asked him to come out and put the dogs out of their misery. We couldn’t even transport them; they were in such bad shape. How could a human do something like that to an animal? I couldn’t understand people. It made me so angry. It was the worst thing I’d ever witnessed and I’d seen a guy disemboweled and hanging from a tier at Folsom.

  Another call, a lady from Sutherland, an upscale neighborhood, found a stray pit she couldn’t keep. I took the dog in and found it a good home, but the lady wouldn’t leave me alone. She wanted to know where I had placed the dog. She wanted to meet the new owners. She wanted to approve of their house. That wasn’t my deal. I took a picture of the dog with her new owners in Summerville and gave the lady the photo. It still wasn’t enough for her. She accused me of fighting pit bulls. Of using her rescue dog as a bait dog. She threatened to call animal control on me. I told her, “Lady, if that’s what you wanna do, then do it, but you will be killing a whole bunch of pit bulls.” She never called animal control, but my experience with her, combined with the chaos of my living situation, had really soured me on rescue.

  Dog rescue often turns normal, loving, good-intentioned people into crazy fanatics. Rescue can engulf your entire life. It can ruin your relationships with your family and friends. I got a cold, hard look at it there in Vegas. Rescuers filing for bankruptcy ’cause the dogs take every cent. Then there are the rescuers living off their dogs by raising money, and spending it on themselves instead. If you’ve got a hundred dogs to feed and you’re collecting checks on their behalf, then the money should go to the dogs. Not your hair or your nails. How can you have nice nails when you run a facility for dogs? There is no way in hell you don’t break a nail every fucking day.

  There was a huge rescue organization, and it was common knowledge that they had their own private jet. A jet? With the money they used to maintain the plane, they could have saved a thousand more dogs! People forgot why they started doing what they’re doing. There’s a big difference between adopting a dog and rescuing a dog. You can rescue all the dogs you want in the world, but if you don’t put in the effort to find them homes, you’re gonna end up running a pound.

  I know, ’cause I was exactly that: a breeder running a pound. I hadn’t planned to be. I hadn’t thought it out. It never crossed my mind that selling pit puppies was a bad thing, until I started seeing my puppies, months later, all grown up and dropped at the pound. Those tiny guys and gals that I’d brought into the world were now full-grown adult pit bulls on death row. I thought I’d done everything I could to give them good homes, but I’d failed. It was like someone stabbed me in the heart.

  I got very opinionated about breeding very fast, and I was vocal about it. I thought every breeder should have to get a state license to breed, and that the license should be goddamn expensive. I thought every breeder should be able to show records of who adopted their dogs for the past ten years, and that their dogs had to be neutered and spayed before adoption. If someone was adopting a dog to show, then they had to provide proof of that career, and they had to sign an agreement not to stud their dog out. If they got caught offering stud services, they would be fined, and the dog would be reclaimed by the original owner. If a breeder found out that a new owner was fighting their pits, then that breeder would have the right to reclaim their dog and turn the owners in to the police. With my big mouth, I spouted my new philosophy wherever I went, and breeders hated me. I didn’t care. Those breeders were selling sperm for $500–$1000 a pop, with no thought as to the consequences of their actions.

  I was down in the trenches, at the pound, seeing the war on pit bulls and Chihuahuas. Every other cage, pit bull, Chihuahua, pit bull, Chihuahua. It was an endless stream of abandonments, and our pound was just one small building in the middle of Las Vegas. Across the country, pounds were killing thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of dogs a day. In Los Angeles, the number of dogs being euthanized was so staggering that they couldn’t dispose of the carcasses. Their solution? The pounds started rendering the dead dogs and selling their remains to farmers as cow food.

  I couldn’t turn a blind eye to my own participation in the problem. I adopted back all the pit bulls that made it to the pound, and got all my dogs fixed, except Hercules, who turned out to be allergic to anesthesia. He almost died on the operating table. I resolved to find all my pits good homes and to get out of the rescue and breeding business. There had to be a better way. I just didn’t know what it was.

  Then, in 2005, Denver reenacted a 1989 citywide policy prohibiting anybody from “owning, possessing, keeping, exercising control over, maintaining, harboring, or selling a pit bull” in the City and County of Denver. They defined a pit bull as any dog that was “an American Pit Bull Terrier, an American Staffordshire Terrier, a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, or any dog displaying the majority of physical traits of any one or more of these breeds.” In other words, if your dog was a mutt, but it looked anything like a pit bull, fuck you, we’re killing your dog.

  Rescue people sent me graphic, horrible photos of dead dogs in barrels. Thousands of pit bulls, put down and thrown into piles like they were the scum of the earth. From puppies to companion dogs that had been with families for twelve, thirteen years, they just rounded them up and slaughtered them. The dogs were annihilated ’cause of their breed, not ’cause they’d done anything wrong. People either had to uproot their families and move out of the city to save their pet’s life, or they had to surrender their dogs. It was unbelievable. There was a war being waged against pit bulls, and I felt powerless. I was just some guy in Vegas with a house full of pit bulls. I couldn’t do nothing.

  Didn’t people know that moms used to call pit bulls “nanny” dogs, because they could be left alone with the kids, to watch over them? Pit bulls had been America’s sweetheart breed: admired, respected, and loved. They’d been used on propaganda posters for World War I and II, with slogans like “Neutral, but not afraid of any of them” and “We’re not looking for trouble, but we’re ready for it.” Sergeant Stubby, a pit bull, was the most decorated war dog to have served in the U.S. military. In the First World War, he warned troops of incoming attacks. He even captured a German spy all on his own. He was a legend and a hero.

  RCA Victor and the Buster Brown Shoe Company used pits as their mascots. A pit named Petey was the star of the Our Gang comedies, better known as The Little Rascals. It used to be common knowledge that pit bulls had accompanied pioneer families across the country. Laura Ingalls Wilder, of the popular Little House series of books, owned a working farm dog, a pit bull named Jack. Theodore Roosevelt and Helen Keller had even owned pit bulls. So why was Denver outlawing an entire breed? Because pit bulls were ghetto dogs, project pups. Pit bulls were a class issue. A race issue. Ever since states started prosecuting dog fights or animal abuse as felony crimes in the late ’70s, the sport had gone underground. It stopped being a pastime of
the white elite, and started being the hustle of the drug world, the gang world, the underprivileged. Pit bulls were portrayed as glorified gladiators in every rap video that played on MTV.

  The stigma destroyed their sweetheart reputation. They were demonized in the press and they were vilified. The same thing had happened to Chows and Dobermans and German Shepherds in the ’70s and early ’80s, but now it was pit bulls and Rottweilers that were taking the fall. People turned on their TVs and heard sensationalized stories about pit bull attacks, or kids being mauled, and rather than examine the facts of that particular case, they swallowed the Kool-Aid and became fearful.

  The dogs were not designed to kill. They had no special “enzyme” that made them fight. It’s only humans that consciously make the decision to kill. All dogs are capable of violence if they’ve been trained by shitty owners to be nasty, protective, fighting machines. Owners think that allowing their dogs to bark at or charge a door is protection. They think that dogs naturally know how to be guard dogs. They’re too damn lazy to pick up a book and figure out the right way to train their pet. If owners allow dogs to behave badly, they will behave badly. Just like kids.

  If some parent isn’t paying attention and leaves their kid in the basement with an unneutered male pit bull and a female in heat, there’s gonna be trouble. If some gangbanger trains a pit bull to help with a home invasion, and the dog tears into some old lady, I can guaran-damn-tee you it wasn’t the dog’s idea to break into that house. For God’s sake, there was a case in Florida where a Pomeranian mauled a baby to death, but people didn’t run out and kill all the Pomeranians. Why were pit bulls being executed?

  I’d never felt so powerless in the face of such outright horror. Not in prison, not in the projects, not even at home. If breeding and boarding weren’t solutions to the problem, and entire cities were annihilating pit bulls by the thousands, how would I ever be able to make a difference? What was the solution? I had no idea.