Iggy and the kid
definitely got a raw deal

Robyn’s Hood
By Robyn McCloskey

Like a lot of people, I watched with interest the recent debacle created by comedian Ellen DeGeneres and her doggie giveaway.
I’m sure most of you are familiar with the story of how Ellen adopted a dog from the Mutts and Moms pet adoption agency only to eventually realize that the little dog, which she named Iggy, could not get along with her cats.
I guess the cats were there first, thus enabling them to call the shots. Anyhow, Ellen went on her TV talk show and rambled on and got all teary about how Marina Batkis and Vanessa Chekroun, the owners of Mutts and Moms in Pasadena, Calif., ripped the dog out of the loving home that Ellen had found for it — a home occupied by Ellen’s personal hairdresser and her two daughters, one of whom is 11.
Apparently, the rule at Mutts and Moms is that no pet can go to homes with children younger than 14. I guess poor Iggy will have to hang in there for three years. Personally I think 11 is the perfect age for a girl to acquire a puppy. They are responsible enough to take care of it and carefree enough to be excited about it.
Once those teenage years arrive, a girl’s doggie-walking time is severely diminished by sleepovers, boys and parties. Surely Iggy would benefit from the unconditional love of a not-yet-teenage girl, and I think a not-yet-teenage girl could benefit from the unconditional love of an Iggy.
Maybe Ms. Batkis and Ms. Chekroun need to re-evaluate this situation. It’s not as if Ellen gave the puppy to Michael Vick.
Since this story broke a few weeks back, Marina and Vanessa have come forward to talk about death threats they’d received after Ellen went public with her pet peeve. The two owners vowed that they would not "be bullied around by the Ellen DeGenereses of the world."
I’m not sure that breaking down in tears on your own talk show constitutes bullying. But the animal lovers of this world are very up in arms, or should I say up in paws, about the issue.
Like most sensationalistic stories of the moment that tend to attract the media, I’m sure there is more to it. Sometimes people do tend to jump to conclusions in life, especially if the topic is one they are quite passionate about.
I do think that threatening the lives of these two women is a bit extreme and uncalled for, perhaps because on some level their situation is one I can relate to. Some time ago, in one of my columns, I wrote about how I’d backed our vehicle out of the driveway and accidentally ran over my daughter’s kitten, which she’d personally rescued from the woods.
The key word was accidentally. But it did not stop one reader from taking the time to send me a handwritten note on stationery adorned with cutesy kitten drawings. "Robyn McCloskey," the reader wrote to me, "is a horrible person and deserves to rot in hell."
I thought that was a little harsh. But I decided to give this woman the benefit of the doubt, that perhaps her reading skills were not quite up to par and she just misunderstood the whole thing.
Which is maybe what we should do for Marina Batkis and Vanessa Chekroun. Let’s just assume that living in California — a lifestyle fraught with smog, freeway jams and the tension of awaiting that next big earthquake — has made the owners of Mutts and Moms just a bit cranky, perhaps to the extent that they have been blinded to the cruelty of taking a dog from a child.
And let’s hope they come to their senses soon, before little girls like the one who lost Iggy no longer believe in the innocence of puppy love, and before these Mutts and Moms owners once again channel their inner Elmira Gulch (remember The Wizard of Oz?) and snatch another puppy from another little girl.
They certainly don’t deserve death threats. Instead, maybe someone should just throw a bucket of water over them. ••
Robyn McCloskey’s column appears each week in the Northeast Times. She can be reached at crmccloskey@verizon.net