Steve Katz, a New York assemblyman and practicing veterinarian, might challenge State Senator Greg Ball for his seat, but first he has to clear up two arrests, both of which involved dogs and were quickly thrown out in court. Katz blames Ball for recirculating the stories, which have been told before, but are now reaching new audiences, thanks to the City & State blog The Notebook, where Katz clarifies today why he put a dead German Shephard in a dumpster and was accused of assaulting a Chihuahua. Woof.
Katz says he picked up the deceased dog as a favor to an old lady, but “while I’m heading to the hospital I’m starting to smell something really bad in my car,” Katz explains. “I won’t go into the details,” he says, “but it was starting to ooze on my daughter’s Barbie doll collection.” When he got to the clinic, he was locked out, and so he placed the dog on top of a dumpster near his apartment, only to be arrested by some cops for doing so. The case was dismissed the following day.
As for allegedly abusing a Chihuahua, Katz says, “The dog lunged at me and took a bite out of piece of my hand, and I’m trying to shake him off my hand, and he fell off the exam table three feet off the floor. And he was fine.” In court, someone from another vet’s office testified that the dog was indeed “meaner than a dirt snake,” and that case, too, was dismissed.
Katz’s explanations sound more than acceptable, but the stories, in all of their absurdity, are not likely to stop coming up — just ask Mitt Romney.
