10/13/2021
An East Coast friend has been posting these pictures of lovable dogs up for adoption at shelters, that no one will take. I've been thinking of getting a "service dog," allowed where I live now. My comment (Yes, I'm writing again): "Sad...It's ironic, but out here the Berkeley Shelter has waiting lists 100 or more long for every dog...Byproduct of Covid, I guess. I was lucky enough to have a great dog, for several years, when I had this two bedroom house, huge front and back yard, in West Berkeley. She was a Golden Retriever/pit bull mix. Very smart, independent but very loyal. She had very powerful front shoulders, would pull on the leash like there was no tomorrow. She loved just roaming in the yard, I'd let the grass grow tall before cutting it. That's when I discovered the drawback to my place, in an apartment complex across the street lived Freddie, the neighborhood crack dealer. His family had been a presence in our hood for over thirty years, most of them had been blown away in drug-dealing disputes. His mama had blown away the father at a Christmas party, with a shotgun, in a dispute he'd had with her lover, another drug dealer. Freddie had grown up as what you call "developmentally disabled," he would pick fights with the "smart" kids in his class because he thought they were "making fun" of him. Beat the poor kid senseless. Never punished, his mama was a School District employee, always rescue her "little boy." Anyway, Freddie would set up shop at this homeless guy's pick up truck, always parked right across the street from me, he and his crew would lean against the truck, facing my house, drink 40 ouncers and wait for the steady stream of cars to honk, pull up, get their s**t. One guy in a big tow truck was a regular, he would pull up, completely blocking off the street, get out and fire up the pipe with them for a half-hour or so...I would be working, on my computer, in the living room, closest to the street. I'd put on headphones, listen to music, but it was still highly annoying. The kicker came when I got my dog, she loved roaming the yard. These clowns would come across the street, taunt her, wait for her to leap against the fence, barking ferociously, then poke her with sticks. If she could have gotten out, she would have torn them to pieces. I came out on the porch one day, shouted at them to leave her alone. Waste of time, they were ignorant, racist mofo's. They taunted me, What you gonna do, whi boy?, laughed. I mean, back in the day, I hacked a cab on the mean, toe-up streets of Oaktown. Weekends, at night. I knew the scene. Over half-a-dozen years I cultivated my "personal" business. Made a lot of friends. I became well-connected, an untouchable. I was living in a decent apartment, but it was downtown, 28th and MLK, in the hood. Faced MLK, where there were cul de sacs across the street, because of the freeway. Zones of enterprise. I'm trying to sleep one morning, bad night, no money out there. These customers are all laying on the horn, across the street, waiting for their s**t. I'd had enough. In just a tank top and shorts, bare feet, I go down and walk across the street. I single out the "top dawg," tell him he's gotta tell his people to lay off the damn horn, I'm trying to sleep. They all laugh, "whi boy." I say I mean it. He steps up, says, Well I mean this, takes a swing at me. Bam, I floor the co******er, give him a good beatdown. His crew are terrified of me. I get up, go back to my building. Nobody followed or touched me. In a week they were gone...(Part One)
(Part Two) Anyway, faced with my dilemma, on the porch of my house, I knew that those days were gone. Too, one hopes that, with age, one gets wiser. Discretion is the better part of valor. So I started keeping her inside, after our morning walk. She did not like it. She would whine, scratch the door, come over to me at the computer, lay her head heavily on my thigh, look up at me with those big brown silken eyes of hers, sigh. Well, I caved, let her back out. It wasn't long before she became violently ill, for several days. Freddie boasted how he's "shut that bitch up." I went down the street, to my friend Lou's, an award-winning sculptor who owned, with his wife, a very nice house. He was head of the Neighborhood Watch. He and his wife told me that, for twenty years they'd been trying to deal with the problem, the BPD dispatchers would laugh at them, hang up. But they said they'd back me. So I called, complained. But it was like the old Rodney Dangerfield joke, where his car breaks down on the turnpike and he calls Triple AAA. Well, they showed, all right, but they towed me instead! Yeah, Off. Jesse Grant, an arrogant little prick, showed up with a couple of goons. I would find out later that Grant had been fired from the OPD, for incompetence, which almost never happens. So they come into my living room, immediately the Neanderthals are trying to turn it back on me. They tell me that I've been "invading their privacy" by taking pictures of them. I admitted that Yeah, under advice of counsel (my old friend Patrick, a stellar attorney, was still alive then), I was taking pictures, from inside my metal mesh screen door, of them doing business. I had a sweet Canon Digital Rebel, with a zoom lens, I had closeups of the money, product, them smoking. Thinking they might be mildly interested, I proffered the camera. They were, one weasel-eyed fat f**k took it, scrolled through, and erased all my pictures. I tried to come back with, Well, does this give them the justification to poison, try to kill my dog? She's completely innocent. The fat f**k (they were all white, BTW) says, Freddie claims you call them the n-word. I said, I swear, that I take grave and serious offense at such a calumniation (from a court case I'd researched). I told them, that back in my student days at UC Berkeley, I'd been a recognized leader of the Students Against Apartheid, and had such friends as Angela Davis and Jane Fonda. Fat F**k scoffs, looks at his buddies, says, Yeah, well we all know you suffer from delusions, you never even went to Cal. I say, as I've had to tell other ignorant blockhead pigs claiming I had no right to be on campus, you can check with the Cal Alumni Association, they will tell you I'm an alumnus, 1974-78, and I even worked for a year afterwards as Asst. Membership Director of the Cal Alumni Association. Plus the Oakland Taxi Detail will verify that I drove a cab, for half-a-dozen years, at night in Oakland. If I were a racist, they would have shot me long ago. Now they're really laughing, poking each other in the ribs. Corrupt mofo's. I say, We're done here, get out of my house...After that, I started getting rousted by a couple of carloads of these BPD stormtroopers, on my way back from morning walks. They'd throw me against a chainlink fence, pat me down, empty my pockets. Turns out Freddie had become a snitch, used to give Grant bl****bs in his cruiser. I started taking my Little Girl with me down to the Waterfront Park, near the Marina, with my laptop and newspapers, I'd set up on a picnic table and work, while she went running around, digging up all these holes, looking for a gopher or squirrel, I guess. I had my camera, too, I'd get great pictures of the waterfowl. One day, though, I was distracted, I had a lot of work to do. I'd let Little Girl run around, with a leash attached, but the fat, weasel-eyed d***s at the BPD Animal Control put the grappling pole on her and took her to doggie jail. When I figured out what had happened, I had to go down to the pound and pay a coupla hundred to bail her out. Shots, license, implanted chip. Poor girl was just lying on her mat, despondent, the staff told me that she wouldn't interact with anyone, and that they were going to put her down in a few days. When she saw me, though, she rushed to the cage bars, licked my hand. I sprung her, but she was shell-shocked. Refused to leave my side, like my shadow...I lost my house when my landlady died, the son-in-law, a real as***le, told me he was selling all of Minnie's properties. I found a good home for my Little Girl, a nice lady in El Cerrito, with a big yard. When I dropped her off there, I talked to her, tried to make clear what was going on.
She seemed to understand, sat there like a soldier when I left.
What a Bee-zerk-elee nightmare! "
