A TALE OF TWO SPECIES
(…and their confrontation gone wrong)

Every now and then an oddball item pops up in the news which catches my eye, and this is one of them.

It’s about a young Staffordshire terrier named – Charlie- and his confrontation with a Park Police horse last August…resulting with him ending up on canine Death Row, while a lot of pro-&-con hoot and hollering about the affair flows all over editorial pages, TV newscasts, and of course…the Blogosphere. Most of the –Pros- ranting for his release, or at least some kind of probation, because they think the severity of his sentence is disproportionate to his alleged crime. The –Cons- for their part, seem bent on making passable imitations of a Mme. LaFarge knitting away at the base of the Guillotine, waiting to see his head drop in the basket. Poor Charlie, but, what about the horse? Hardly any mention has been made of him, not even his name. As a party to this affair shouldn’t he get equal billing in the reporting about the affair?’’  If not…why not?

Normally equines and canines mostly get along, and occasionally, even become close buddies. But not this time around. While Staffordshires aren’t exactly pocket mutts, they’re not particularly large either. Of course, like most of the terrier breeds they do tend to be excitable and somewhat cranky by nature. Police horses, on the other hand, are chosen not just for size, but also for their relatively calm character…plus…are trained not to get skittish when surrounded by mobs of people, scampering kids, noisy vehicles, and even yapping dogs around their hind quarters.

So what happened last August in this tale of two species…with a confrontation gone wrong? How is it that a dog probably not tipping the scales at more than 20-30 pounds managed to mangle a leg (or two?) and traumatize a horse weighing in at around 1200 pounds and who, with one swift kick of a steel shod hoof, could have crushed Charlie’s skull like an egg shell, or sent him yelping with pain with a bunch of cracked ribs…back to his owner. It’s a very odd tale indeed, and we have very few details or explanations about how that confrontation came about.

We all know that dogs (some more than others) are inclined by their ancestral wolf DNA to chase anything with four legs that moves. So the question is…what was it about that horse that caught Charlie’s attention and caused him to think…hot damn…something more interesting to chase than that stupid ball or frisby my master’s tossing around for me…?  Then again, since Charlie was running around on leash-free turf, it just might be that horse patrol crossed through it instead of around it, thus from a canine perspective, trespassing on his playground… so he went after the intruder. It might take an expert canine shrink to figure all that out, no doubt.

But the real crux of the problem boils down to one thing…whatever his motivations, Charlie, committed the cardinal sin of assaulting a police officer. That’s right, folks, whether human, canine, or as in this case, equine, these are all considered  serving police officers…and assaulting one is a very, very bad no-no. Thus the severity of Charlie’s sentence.

Well, let’s hope this tale of two species will eventually be resolved equitably.

CENTURION