Dog Tales

by Jack Dann

  This legislation was the culmination of a struggle between pro- and anti-dog forces that has gripped New York with the power of an idée fixe for more than a decade. The issue has been contested in public hearings, judicial chambers, bars, supermarkets, subways and taxies, in hippie pads and sumptuous penthouses, at dinner parties and on street corners. It has received more media air time and column space in New York City than has the controversial Latin American war, including the President’s decision last year to resume the bombing of Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. It has directly influenced a half-dozen major political careers and several more minor ones. The liberal and popular Alastair MacDonnel, for example, who followed John Lindsay into Gracie Mansion in 1974, was defeated after one term in a hard and bitter campaign by Nicholas Spinelli. Spinelli, a grass-roots conservative, beat a single and ever-loudening drum throughout the fight—BAN THE DOGS! BAN THE DOGS!

  New York remains a fundamentally liberal city, but still it awarded Spinelli the mayoralty; there are simply more dog haters than dog lovers.

  Bloody Tuesday was brought to a halt within 24 hours by an emergency session of the City Council. But by then the tally had already risen to:

  *43 persons dead,

  *387 persons injured,

  *8 women raped,

  *6 buildings burned,

  *56 apartments reduced to shambles,

  *700 windows broken,

  *16 vehicles demolished, and

  *300 to 500 dogs slaughtered before the eyes of their horror-stricken owners.

  Professional criminals took swift advantage of the citywide confusion. Armed robbery was reported at 12 times its normal rate, burglary at eight, vehicle theft at two, and petty larceny at a staggering 21.

  DIM is an acronym for Dogs Inimical to Man, Inc., an international anti-dog organization headquartered in New York City. It is commonly understood that the initials were taken from a movie of the late 1960s, Midnight Cowboy, in which a woman led her bejeweled poodle to the curb and anxiously urged the creature to “Do it for Mama!” DIM’s unofficial but traditional rallying cry is that same derisory request. DIM was founded in late 1971 by a handful of private citizens who were inspired by a New York Post editorial entitled “Filth City.” Pete Hamill, author of the editorial, was one of the first public figures to spotlight the growing problem of dogs in modern cities, and he stated that if no other solution could be found, “we could declare a bounty and start shooting them.” This suggestion was in good part capricious, but it was also pathetically prophetic.

  Dog lovers at first dismissed DIM as a distasteful but harmless crank organization. Few understood the depth and intensity of the anti-dog sentiment that lay waiting to be tapped in New York, and in many other cities as well. Within 18 months DIM had recruited 15,000 members (at a $15 initiation fee, and annual dues of $10) and had authorized chapters in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Miami. By 1977 it was a strong social and political force actively supported by seven million members; its central offices occupied a new eight-story steel-and-glass building on Lexington Avenue; it had chapters in 21 American cities and six foreign countries. Its efforts, it is generally agreed, were the deciding factor in the election of Mayor Nicholas Spinelli.

  DIM selected New York City as its test case and waged an extended, arduous, sometimes vicious, and hugely expensive campaign. Politicians, ecologists, city planners, psychiatrists, sociologists, pediatricians, social workers and experts from a wide variety of other disciplines testified against dogs alongside large numbers of private citizens at public hearings and in open forums. DOG (a loosely knit and poorly structured organization formed to defend canine “citizens”) produced its own expert and sympathetic witnesses.

  Statisticians were baffled in attempts to draw social, economic, and ethnic profiles of dog haters and dog lovers. Allegiance was unpredictable: $75,000-a-year portfolio managers found themselves ranked side by side with Maoist revolutionaries, and both were as likely to view the dog as anathema as they were to see him as an integral part of human existence.

  DIM presented an horrific picture. While the city’s human population increased by only 13 percent between 1970 and 1980 (eight million to nine million), the canine population rose by 50 percent, swelling from 500,000 to a formidable 750,000 animals—one dog for every 12 humans, one dog for every three families. In 1982, 46,000 New Yorkers (as opposed to 33,000 in 1970) were bitten seriously enough to require medical attention. Each day, dogs released 12,000 quarts of urine and dropped 281,000 pounds of excrement onto the streets.

  “That gives us a million gallons of p__s each year,” said Timothy Flanagan, chief of the Uniformed Sanitation Workers. “Most of it dries up or gets washed into the sewers when it rains, but we still get a hundred and two million pounds of c__p that’s gotta be hauled away! Everyone complains we don’t pick up their garbage. Hell, we’re too busy cleanin’ up their dogs__t!”

  City Health Commissioner Lawrence Reid said, “One needn’t be a medical man, or even be aware of the gruesome specifics, to know that all that waste material is a health hazard. I don’t know how we’ve escaped a plague thus far.”

  Other experts did not eschew specifics. Toxocara canis, one disease cited, attacks and can do severe damage to the human victim’s liver, lungs, and eyes. Leptospirosis is an infection frequently involved with aseptic meningitis. Dogs can infect humans with scabies and ringworm. And an epidemic of rabies, DIM claimed, is also a constant hazard.

  Louis G. Foster, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, stated: “Dogs commit aesthetic atrocities against the city. Their residue offends the eye whether it is piled atop the summer concrete, or blemishing the winter snow. One must be a talented obstacle runner to avoid befouling one’s shoes with the stuff. And bluntly . . . it stinks. Lord, how it stinks!”

  Dogs are also sources of noise pollution, DIM pointed out. Throughout the city, from crowded tenement rooms to co-ops with river views, they bark and growl behind closed doors at the slightest sound. They hurl ear-punishing challenges at each other on the streets. They whine and scream with loneliness when their masters are away. The passage of a police or fire siren creates great, spreading waves of howls and wails that linger long into the night.

  Many owners allow their pets to walk off leash; these dogs frequently menace or bowl people over, leap up in friendliness and soil clothes, or dash across streets, causing traffic accidents as motorists swerve to avoid them. DIM advises its members: “You, the driver, have the right of way: assert it.” Sports players, strollers, nature lovers and mothers with small children have been forced out of the parks by hordes of dogs unleashed for exercise.

  Attack-trained dogs are a very serious problem. In 1970 there were 4,000 of these beasts in the city; in 1980 more than 10,000; and DIM claims the number has now risen to 14,000. These animals have been purchased in response to a mushrooming crime rate. Among other frightening statistics, the current odds are one in five that the average citizen will be robbed at gunpoint or mugged if he does not reach the sanctuary of his home by nightfall. A well-bred and properly trained attack-dog is an effective and safe defense against crime. He will attack only when commanded, or if his master is assaulted. Unfortunately, the skyrocketing demand for canine protection has caused a boom of unqualified “trainers,” whose simple technique is to abuse a dog so savagely that he becomes a man-hater intent on tearing apart everyone but his master, and even him sometimes; less than a third of New York City’s attack dogs have been competently trained; the rest are serious threats to the general public. Such animals have mutilated and inflicted serious and permanent damage upon many citizens.

  Wisely, the DOG forces did not attempt to deny the problem, or even its magnitude. “Of course there are great difficulties,” said Marcus Crozier, Manhattan Borough president, and himself the owner of two yellow Labrador retrievers. “Solutions must be found, and soon. But proscribing dogs from the city is patently absurd. By the same reasoning, we should solve our poverty problem by ba
nishing the poor.” This argument stood in DIM’s path like a snarling dog for some time; it suggested to the unsure citizen that a canine purge would be an evasion of responsibility, an admission of failure, a cop-out.

  DOG also admitted that the brutalized, and therefore brutal, animals being sold as attack dogs were a definite menace. But the answer, they claimed, lay in the establishment of an agency to control standards, license qualified trainers, and certify the stability of finished dogs. So far as the bites of run-of-the-mill animals were concerned, these were usually of negligible severity, requiring little more treatment than a good cleaning and a Band-Aid. Dozens of professional trainers, behavioral psychologists, cynologists, and naturalists insisted there are very few renegade or truly vicious dogs. “When a dog bites,” said Dr. Charles Naylor, director of Animal Studies at the Johns Hopkins Institute, “there is always a reason—he’s being teased, frightened, stepped on or run into, he’s being beaten, and so on. What would you do if a stranger manhandled you? Dogs don’t dash around the streets looking for people to bite. Respect a dog’s rights, and he’ll respect yours.” As for unleashed animals, DOG suggested that enforcement of existing statutes would curtail the problem. To avoid burdening the already overworked police, DOG proposed a corps under the auspices of the ASPCA, that would be empowered to give tickets to owners of unleashed dogs.

  Medical arguments against dogs were attacked as specious at best, perhaps even deliberately misleading. Howard Grossinger, DVM and president of the Veterinary Medical Association of the United States, testified: “Common prophylactic measures have all but eliminated rabies as a disease of domestic animals in the United States. There hasn’t been a single case in the New York area for 35 years. It would be more reasonable to fear a cholera epidemic than an outbreak of rabies.” Abundant documentary evidence made clear that dog wastes, no matter how aesthetically objectionable, posed no special threat to health. Dismissing DIM’s largest bugaboos, Dr. Grossinger commented: “A much larger incidence of ringworm and scabies is found among humans than dogs. If a dog contracts either, chances are that he got them from his owner. In any event, both diseases are easily treated. Leptospirosis can be contracted by swimming in water polluted with infected dog urine. However, since male dogs, as I’m sure you’re aware, employ the classic three-legged stance while urinating, and females must squat, swimming dogs rarely release their urine into water. Someone would have to dump several gallons of the diseased stuff into a swimming area. And having read the results of the Mayor’s Pure Water Survey, I assure you that persons daring most of the waters found in the Greater New York area would be felled by a variety of other diseases long before they could develop Leptospirosis. This disease, as well as Toxocara canis, may also be contracted by prolonged handling or ingestion of earth moist with the excrement or urine of infected dogs. I see little possibility of infection by this means unless New Yorkers are devoted to what would certainly be a most peculiar fetish. Gentlemen, without resorting to bold-face lies, you are simply not going to be able to condemn the dog as a health hazard. If you want to talk about the four or five million rats in this city, fine; I’d be happy to testify on behalf of the ‘anti’ faction.”

  In four consecutive years, DOG managed to roll back four proposed pieces of restrictive legislation sponsored by DIM. Among these were an exorbitant annual license fee and a one percent surcharge on city income tax. Both were defeated on the grounds that they would discriminate in favor of the well-to-do.

  The ASPCA and the American Kennel Club worked indefatigably with DOG to persuade pet owners to police themselves and reduce the annoyance quotient of their animals. Training handbooks were distributed free of charge by the ASPCA. DOG installed and serviced 25 experimental “Canine Comfort Stations,” public animal toilets. The stench from these was indescribable; many dogs refused to use them; most owners ignored them. Owners were urged to carry excrement retrieval equipment (cheap plastic tongs and plastic “Good Citizen” bags), but the cleanup process was rejected as embarrassing and/or inconvenient. Inconvenience (and protests from neighbors and landlords) also undermined a program in which corners of basements and roofs were to be designated “Relief Areas.”

  The battle was waged with unflagging zeal and escalating hostility by both sides. Eventually most semblances of objectivity were lost and partisans went at each other with abandoned ferocity. It came down to the simple questions: “You for ’em, or against ’em?” Buttons reading Cities Are For Humans appeared on hundreds and thousands of lapels. DOG countered with its own buttons, which bore a paw print. Cleveland Amory, social commentator and long an influential champion of animal welfare, was one of DOG’s most eloquent and passionate spokesmen. At the public hearings late last year, he said in a tremulous voice: “Cities are indeed for humans, but to be human is to recognize one’s place in the totality of the natural world, to realize that the phrase ‘Man’s Best Friend’ was not the invention of a Madison Avenue copywriter, but the natural result of untold thousands of years of history in which man has shared his domicile with this most wondrous of creatures, in which the dog has worked for man, has loyally defended him, has been a boon and merry companion, and has solaced him through countless dark and lonely nights. Cities are for humans, yes, but the dog is inseparably bound to humans, and humans to it. The people who cry ban the dogs are those who would also have us build even higher skyscrapers, who would lay concrete over our parks, who would have us befoul what little remains of our once-beautiful world, and who would trap and destroy our souls in an automated vacuum of technological marvels. To these people I say, Never! Never! Never!”

  Pete Hamill followed Mr. Amory to the stand. Grown cynical and snappish during the years of his repeated work in behalf of DIM, Hamill ended his testimony with his customary: “Put a bounty on the beasts; my rifle is ready.”

  Mr. Amory shouted, “Put a bounty on Hamill! My rifle is ready!” and rushed the stand, where he and Mr. Hamill grappled furiously. One bailiff was kicked in the groin and another bitten on the arm before the combatants could be separated.

  DOG’s efforts were valiant, but its cause foredoomed. Four elements were decisive in the passage of Section 161.05: (1) There were (and still are) so many dogs in the city that no one could escape them; there were, therefore, very few neutrals, and the majority were non-dog owners. (2) Severe or not, a bite remains a bite, and animals who puncture New Yorkers at the rate of 46,000 per year do not endear themselves to New Yorkers. (3) The 24-hour-per-day racket of these creatures shatters equilibrium and psyches. (4) The city, as Mr. Foster said, stinks, and, in the words of Mayor Spinelli, “We will just not, just not, put up with having to clean dogs__t off our shoes five and six times a day.”

  Passage of the bill in March of this year caused a massive protest march of 200,000 persons down Fifth Avenue and touched off numerous demonstrations. There were small riots in East Harlem, Bryant Park, Tompkins Square, Sheridan Square, and the Chase Manhattan Plaza. Pete Hamill, Mayor Spinelli, and several other city officials were burned in effigy.

  Dog owners were given six months to find new homes for their pets beyond the city limits. Both sides used their influence to obtain quick legal rulings on the constitutionality of the law.

  The city was upheld throughout the United States District Court and the United States Court of Appeals. In July, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. There was no further legal way to fight Section 161.05. New York’s dogs had little more than two months’ grace remaining.

  Never in the history of the United States—including prohibition, the racial struggle, and the wars in Indochina and Latin American—has such a great percentage of the population reacted with such consummate bitterness and openly declared that a law could be damned. Hundreds of thousands of buttons, bumper stickers, decals, and door and window banners blossomed throughout the city. These bore one of two slogans: Cleveland Amory’s Never! Never! Never! or State Senator John Gordon’s reworking of an old radical cry, Hell, No, Do
gs Won’t Go! Mr. Gordon (Rep., Queens) who once condemned William F. Buckley, Jr., as a “com-symp,” was a screaming hawk on the Latin American war very nearly before there was a Latin American war, and last year carried the standard of Law, Order, & Morality to previously unimagined heights when he introduced in the state legislature, and fought in behalf of with the zeal of God’s Soldier, a bill mandating the death penalty for any person convicted of desecrating the American flag. (The bill was defeated 55 to 2.) Accused by Time magazine, among others, of contradicting the stance of his last 40 years, Mr. Gordon, who is never seen without Fiji, his AKC champion Old English sheepdog replied: “That’s ridiculous. There is no inconsistency whatsoever in my positions. The relationship between man and dog was born in antiquity. We are inseparable, almost a single corporate entity. As man has neither the right nor the ability to legislate against his heartbeat, so has he neither the right nor the ability to legislate against his dogs.”