Do Cities Really Need Dogs?

The dog may well be urban man's worst friend. The beast in the city jungle chews children, attacks joggers and howls into the night in a cramped apartment that makes it neurotic. When it does get out--twice a day, if its master can manage--it turns street and sidewalk alike into messy booby traps for pedestrians. The brassy blonde in the film Midnight Cowboy said it all when she coaxed her toy poodle: "Do it for mama."

In cities throughout the world, dogs are fast becoming the most obnoxious minority group. There are 280,000 of them in Tokyo, 300,000 in Los Angeles, 500,000 in New York City, 700,000 in London, and more than a million in Mexico City (including strays). And they are all "doing it"--on sidewalks and park lawns, against fire hydrants and defenseless city tree trunks. In Manhattan recently, one proud brownstone owner was on his knees watering his few flowers when he suddenly felt his bald pate being used as a fire hydrant. When he leaped up snarling at the dog, its owner whipped out a police badge and threatened to arrest him for disorderly conduct.

Innocent Victims. The trouble is that cities are full of lonely people who rely on dogs as substitute friends, spouses and children. Many a furnished room contains a small human and a huge Great Dane or similar beast. Some homosexuals use exotic breeds as props for pickups. In Manhattan's Riverside Park, one eccentric spinster used to talk incessantly to her aged dachshund while wheeling it about in a baby carriage. An indignant father once tried to embarrass her by having his toddler wear a dog muzzle, to no avail.

Beyond all that, city dogs are supposed to repel burglars and muggers; high-crime areas now teem with Doberman pinschers and German shepherds. But who protects the innocent from the protectors? Last year Tokyo recorded about 5,000 complaints of dog bites from newsboys, mailmen, salesmen and bill collectors. New York's bite toll hit 25,000. Britons are so worried about rabies that they have barred all dogs and cats from entering the country. The isolation period for the pets now in quarantine under old laws has been extended from six months to a year. Rabies is an even worse worry in Lima, Peru, which has as many dogs as it has people. Americans may soon face another problem. A new boom in "attack dogs" is creating protectors trained (for as much as $4,000) to maim or kill marauders, but there are already cases of robbers using their own dogs to subdue victims.

Filth City. The most docile dogs irk city dwellers by tripping strollers with long leashes, muddying lobbies, preempting elevators and perpetually sniffing people. Dogs can give humans tuberculosis, create allergies and cause assorted eye and intestinal infections. New York Post Columnist Pete Hamill, a relentless dog baiter, speaks for many in labeling his town "Filth City." As he puts it: "Nobody can tell me that all those piles left around the streets are good for us, no matter how many burglars are scared off when the dogs are home."

The prime offenders, of course, are not so much the dogs as their owners. Cities abound with curb-your-dog signs; those near Manhattan's U.N. building deliver the message in four languages. But who heeds them? Owners know that cops are often too busy even to enforce the laws requiring leashes.

Final Solution. As a result, health experts are pondering the rising role of dogs as a serious sanitation problem. Dr. Jeroham Asedo, chief veterinarian for the New York City Health Department, says that dog feces contain "spores, eggs of worms and other disease matter." When rain cleanses the streets, he says, such wastes swell "the flow of untreated sewage into our streams and waterways."

What can be done? New York, for example, is so infested with dogs that Environmental Protection Administrator Jerome Kretchmer has listed as one of his priorities ridding the streets of their excrement. Post Columnist Hamill, who urges the city to ban all big dogs, offers an even more practical idea. If strict licensing fails to curb canines, Hamill's final solution is to begin shooting them.

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