A nine-minute video released by the Dallas Animal Services people this week was an instant hit. There’s a two-minute interview with the shelter’s operations director, followed by seven minutes’ worth of blurry raw footage starring Bentley, Bentley and more Bentley.
Bentley, in case you have been living in a cave or in a coma, is the dog owned by Nina Pham. She was the first of two Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas nurses sickened by the Ebola virus after caring for infected patient Thomas Eric Duncan.
After Pham was hospitalized, Bentley was scooped up by workers in spooky hazmat suits and whisked away to a secret location, later revealed to be an isolation room at the old naval air station on West Jefferson Boulevard.
Bentley Central is staffed by vets, caretakers and a team dispatched from Texas A&M University. He has pleasant quarters, toys, chow, treats, an Amazon wish list and a special fund set up to offset the costs of his care. Mayor Mike Rawlings said caring for Bentley is a top city priority. County Judge Clay Jenkins said with grim determination that even “if that dog has to be The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, we’re going to take good care of that dog.”
Is this a lot of fuss for one dog? Yes, it certainly is.
Is it warranted? Yes.
It doesn’t hurt that Bentley, a year-old Cavalier King Charles spaniel, is almost ludicrously cute. He’s the sort of dog that makes educated adults lapse into adoring baby talk and makes wistful little girls forget they ever wanted a pony. The camera loves him. Bentley has star power.
But even if Bentley were a shivering, snappish psycho-mutt with three legs and a ratty hairless tail, he would be worth all the fuss.
First, because it’s a way for the community to rally around Pham who, like the second infected nurse, Amber Vinson, is a hero in this scary episode.
The shrill finger-pointing and fear-mongering that swiftly followed the first cases of Ebola in the United States came from people whose risk of contracting the virus is basically zero. Pham and Vincent are proof that the virus works the way 40 years of research says it does — putting those providing the front-line care for Ebola patients in the highest risk category.
Studies conflict over whether dogs can transmit the virus. Bentley has tested Ebola-free; he’ll be tested again before being reunited with Pham, whose condition is listed as good.
And second, because it says there are people in Dallas who appreciate not only the importance many humans attach to animals, but the inherent worth of animals themselves.
Not everyone feels this way, of course. The media, in its adoration of the thoroughly photogenic Bentley, runs the risk of minimizing the deadly severity of the uncontrolled Ebola epidemic in West Africa with too much sugary cute-dog coverage.
I see these comments a lot: “Get a grip — it’s just a dog!” “Why is this on the front page? Get some real news.”
Similar comments were made last year when animal advocates pushed hard for the aggressive prosecution of a man charged with setting fire to a stray dog, which later died of its injuries. When I wrote about the case, an angry woman called me to ask: “Why do you want to ruin this man’s life over a dog?”
Maybe because, as any first-year psychology student will tell you, a person who tortures animals is probably capable of torturing other people. Or maybe because there’s an inverse corollary: People who care about the welfare of animals often also care about the welfare of humans.
It wasn’t so long ago that the city of Dallas had a fairly awful reputation for the care it afforded stray animals, with overcrowded shelters and wretchedly high euthanization rates.
That has changed under greatly improved shelter leadership, more public attention and a citizen support group — the Dallas Companion Animal Project — to help shepherd the city’s emphasis from animal “control” to “welfare.”
Bentley does not seem to mind serving as a temporary celebrity face for those efforts. A fund set up for Bentley’s care has raised about $6,000, said DCAP president Maeleska Fletes. The fund will be a permanent resource for other pets displaced, like Bentley, by natural disasters or public emergencies. The fine print on Bentley’s “wish list” specifies that some donations may be used to support other animal-welfare operations.
Bentley’s awfully fetching. If he gets your attention, maybe you’ll start thinking that you’d like a pet of your own. As the owner of three high-quality cats adopted through DAS, I can assure you that they have a wonderful (and often, lamentably large) supply.
Or maybe you can spare a dollar or two for the Bentley-inspired Dallas PETS (Pet Emergency Transition Services) fund — www.dallasanimals.org.
Bentley’s care is an example of the profound compassion of which this community is capable.
Maybe one day it will be that way for every dog in town.
