So I’m walking home yesterday from Jack London Square—glorious day, warm and sunny—down Clay Street, just past the Nimitz, when I see a sketchy guy ahead of me, hanging out in the street, with a big Pit bull on a chain. I halt for a moment to check it out. I don’t much trust pit bulls, to be honest. Just saying, especially when they’re owned by people who appear to be homeless. While I’m standing there, another guy comes up from behind me. I glance at him: he’s just a harmless jogger. As he passes me and gets near the guy with the pit bull, the dog owner says something to his animal—I don’t know what—and the dog snarls, leaps in the air and lunges at the jogger, until his chain snaps him back. The frightened jogger does an instinctive leap in the air and jumps over the stretched chain, to get away from the dog, and continues on.
I’m shocked. Who would allow his attack dog to lunge at an innocent passerby? I stood there for a second or two, watching the dog and its owner while they watched me. Then I asked, “Am I safe?” I wasn’t being snarky. I genuinely wanted to know if I could pass by without being attacked.
“I’m the one who isn’t safe,” the owner said. He was a Black guy. At first I thought, “What aren’t you safe from, your own dog?” Then the pathos in his voice sank in. I realized he meant he’s not safe on the streets, which is probably why he has an attack dog in the first place.
Now, I’ve read plenty about how some homeless people don’t feel safe on the streets and so they get big dogs to help protect them. I never had much sympathy with that. If your life is such a failure that you end up on the street, it’s probably your own fault. You should have thought of that before you dropped out and started taking all those drugs and booze. Besides, people who have aggressive dogs are aggressive themselves. I don’t like them.
But this time, something in the guy’s voice struck me. It was, for lack of a better term, pathos. Usually, if you say something to a homeless person with a Pit bull, they’re going to respond negatively, which is why most of us don’t bother interacting with homeless people with Pit bulls. But this guy wasn’t challenging me, or resenting me in any way. It was raw, aching truth he spoke, and he wanted me to understand it. Every day and night that he’s out there in the street, his physical safety, maybe his life, could end in an eruption of violence. Having that big, nasty dog by his side could well be the difference between continued existence and death.
Realizing this doesn’t really change how I feel about the homeless. I still want them off the streets. I still want our hapless, negligent city to enforce its own damned laws and clear out the encampments and roust every homeless person in every public place in Oakland. I still yearn of living in a clean, safe city where honest people are respected and protected. Just a dream? Perhaps. But I live on dreams.
But yesterday, for just a moment, I had a glimpse into the dog owner’s soul, via his voice, and heard and felt a fellow human being who’s scared and helpless. And it was heartbreaking.
Steve Heimoff