MAN BLAMES DOG.(The Talk of the Town)

Pity the poor dog. In this time of heightened fear--of drugs, of bombs, of the things we humans might do to one another--man increasingly asks so much of him. Last week, dog crews patrolled New York's subway tunnels, while along our borders new graduates of the Canine Enforcement Training Center--Belgian Malinois, German shepherds, Labrador retrievers--were out sniffing, in numbers and locations not to be disclosed, for chemical weapons. In return, man has had little to offer but gratitude. And these days even the gratitude seems to be in short supply. Last Monday's news of a Hell's Kitchen night-club drug sting was noteworthy, not least because of the revelation that the offending club, Sound Factory, had been busted before, and had been allowed to remain open on the condition that, among other things, it employ a dog to do what its human owners, out of common business sense, wouldn't do: turn away seventy per cent of their potential customers--the portion of clubgoers, on an average night, who are drug users, according to police estimates.

In a triumphant press conference, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced that at the time of this most recent raid Sound Factory's supposed detector dog had been found to be "asleep on the job, as usual," while transactions for Ecstasy, cocaine, and other narcotics were conducted inside.

"The dog hasn't been arrested," Kenneth Aronson, Sound Factory's attorney, was quick to point out. (The club owner and two associates have been.) But in the court of public opinion the pooch was as good as guilty, its reputation in the scent-detection community shot.

"I was very upset about that," Stephanie Kramer, the culprit's personal handler, said late last week. "I e-mailed the Commissioner about what he said. That was an unfair statement." Kramer is a franchisee of Interquest Detection Canines, "the nation's oldest and largest canine detection and drug dog firm." She said the dog's name is Fanta. Fanta is a she, a seven-year-old black Labrador of Eastern European descent. She has been "doing drugs" for a year and a half, ever since she completed her training, in Texas. She lives with Kramer in eastern Pennsylvania, about an hour and a half's drive from Sound Factory. She does most of her scent work at schools and offices.

"You have to understand, the club was so slow that night," Kramer explained. "There was something going on--a big party in Miami, I ...