It’s a Dog Eat Dog World

Back in Los Angeles.

My first four days home mainly consisted of organizing my room, watching Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist with ma and pa, going to the dentist to get a tooth bonded, and taking a diagnostic LSAT. 

Yesterday around 2pm I get a call from a college friend who is visiting Los Angeles just for the day and wants to meet up for some LAish activity. Keep in mind the weather was all sunshine in the mid-seventies and I am equipped with a god-given knack for playing tour guide. Besides, this would give me the excuse I needed to reintroduce myself to the City of Angels.

So we decide to head on over to Venice Beach and take my dog Roxie for a stroll on the boardwalk. “Pleasant” is the best way to describe the first half of the outing: walk on the path for about twenty minutes, head down towards the water for a bit, grab a beer and some snacks at a boardwalk café overlooking the Pacific. I even had one of those “I don’t know why LA gets such a bad rap” moments. Like I said, everything up to this point was pleasant. Very pleasant.

Around 4:45, it’s time to leave Venice. My friend has a play to catch and I have dinner plans with father Baumgarten. Right as we are exiting the boardwalk, a pit bull on a leash approaches Roxie in what seemed to be one of those I-am-a-dog-you-are-a-dog-let’s-sniff-each-other-sessions. But instead of a good-old sniff fest, the pit bull just starts biting Roxie’s left ear. (While I never caught the pit bull’s name, from this point forward, I am going to refer to that dog as Mike Tyson, the boxer who notoriously bit Evander Holyfield’s ear off in a match.)

Holding Roxie’s leash, I try to pull her back. Tyson’s owner tried to do the same with her dog. Neither of us are having any luck in this tug-a-war match. Thirty-second into the Tyson-biting-Roxie’s-ear-a-thon, the owner tries to physically remove the dog’s jaw from Roxie’s ear. My out of town guests sticks his hand in there as well. In the process, the pit bull bites both of them.