Animal lovers’ online vitriol
Lucy the lost pit bull’s saga sparks relief — and controversy
Lucy became a celebrity when she slipped away from the dog sitter in Venice while her family was in Europe. Hundreds of animal lovers scoured the Westside last month, posting photos, knocking on doors and fielding phone calls. Her frantic owners cut their trip short and rushed back.
Three weeks later, the shy, small, sweet pit bull turned up in Culver City with a laceration on her snout and nubs where her back teeth had been.
People across the country — who’d seen news ac-
counts and followed her saga on Facebook — cheered Lucy’s return.
But the celebration soon spiraled into controversy over claims that Lucy had been held captive and used as bait by a dog-fighting ring. That could explain the cut on her muzzle and why her teeth looked like they’d been filed down.
Lucy’s owners, a veterinarian and her real estate agent boyfriend, couldn’t have known it, but their next move would ignite a firestorm:
They launched a go fund me page — Dog Fighters Took Lucy’s Teeth — to raise money for the surgery needed to restore her mouth.
In 10 hours, the appeal pulled in more than $5,000.
But it also sparked a nasty, name-calling online brawl that devastated her owners and divided animal lovers on the Facebook forum.
Some people were skeptical of a storyline that seemed crafted to tug at heartstrings: Why was Lucy found still wearing her fancy collar? Where do these Westside dog-fighting rings hide? Others objected to the solicitation.
“I find you starting a funding page quite astonishing,” wrote a woman who’d followed Lucy’s story online. “People are entitled to donate to anything they want, however do you realize that 5000 dogs die in shelters everyday because rescues are full or cannot afford the medical care the dogs require? Do you realize how far a rescue could take $5000?”
Critics like her — and anyone who dared to suggest that dog-fighting might not be involved — were pounced on and insulted; called jealous hags, lonely trolls, menopausal losers and worse by defenders of Lucy’s owners, Finneus Egan and Antje Hinz.
The couple adopted Lucy two years ago, after she had been abused. Now a registered therapy dog, Lucy comforted Hinz through a bout with cancer and is the official greeter at her veterinary clinic, where Hinz often tends dogs cared for by rescue groups.
“It was so hard for Dr. Hinz to share her private story, and now it’s one of the things she is being flamed for,” complained a woman whose profile picture is a cat.
“I thank all the haters for reminding me why I hate people.”
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Dip into any social media discussion on a suffering animal, and you’ll find ugly rants about humans and attacks aimed at squashing even modest dissent.
How can people who are so devoted to animals be so hateful toward other people who share that commitment?
I lean toward the skeptics’ position on the role dog-fighting played in Lucy’s disappearance. A canine dental specialist told her owners that the wounds were likely inflicted on her. But animal experts I interviewed said other things could account for the sawed-off condition of Lucy’s back teeth.
And a detective on the Los Angeles Police Department task force that investigates animal cruelty said officials haven’t found a single dog-fighting ring in the city during her 2 years on the team. They are more apt to exist in outlying areas, like Palmdale or San Bernardino.
“We’ve gotten tips and we act on them — and find a couple of pit bulls tied to a tree,” she said. “Right away people think that’s a dogfighting ring.”
I’m not using the officer’s name because I don’t want to subject her to the zealots’ invective. But the dogfighting story doesn’t add up, she said. “If it was a dog-fighting ring using her for bait, why would they release the dog?
“Maybe the poor doggie was lost for three weeks and did what she could to survive. …She must have been hungry; she could have been gnawing on rocks.”
That doesn’t mean anyone’s lying. “Sometimes,” the detective said, “people just want to think the worst.”
I suppose it makes Lucy’s odyssey more dramatic — and her return what Egan considers “a miraculous homecoming.” Maybe it’s less wrenching to imagine Lucy as a hostage who broke free than to think of her eating from trash cans, dodging cars and roaming the streets alone for weeks.
But it might also unnecessarily alarm people who now believe that gang members are trolling the Westside, scooping up errant pets to feed to killer dogs.
The fact is, none of us knows what happened to Lucy while she was gone. Instead of ginning up villains, this ought to be about heroes: the volunteers who came together to help find Lucy — before some of them turned on one another.
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The search showed how street teams, rescue outreach and social media can up the odds of recovering lost animals.
Egan and Hinz are grateful for all the help, but so unsettled by the way this devolved, they declined to talk about it.
“The attacks have gotten super personal and it is taking a huge emotional toll,” Egan wrote me in an email this week. “Honestly, I am feeling a little overwhelmed right now.”
He’d like to use any money left over from Lucy’s surgery to create a search template that other pet owners could follow.
Last week, someone who’d seen one of the fliers plastered all over the Westside called to say Lucy was in her backyard. A flurry of people went looking but, whenever someone spotted her, Lucy bolted. Then a group of men saw her crossing a parking lot and called the number under her photo.
Egan hurried over and walked street-to-street, shouting for his dog.
Finally he spied her hiding behind a bush. He knelt down, called her name softly and Lucy came bounding over — skinny, shaking and scared, but on her way home.