D'Angelo Russell and dogs -- a love affair

— --

THERE ARE THOSE who like dogs. There are those who love dogs. And then there is Los Angeles Lakers guard D'Angelo Russell. His dad, Antonio Russell, remembers that from Russell's earliest years through his teens, if anything happened to a dog in a movie or TV show, Russell would break down crying. Antonio would try to comfort him. "You know it's just TV," he'd remind his son. But Russell said he didn't care. It felt real enough to him.

"He really is crazy about dogs," Antonio says now.

So when D'Angelo, as a middle-schooler, came by a blue-eyed pit bull named Diamond, she became everything to him. He spent countless hours walking with her around the neighborhood, trying to teach her new tricks, playing in the backyard, where there was a small opening in the fence that she could squeeze through. She escaped a few times, but he always found her. Then one day, after keeping her in the backyard like always, Diamond was gone. D'Angelo was beside himself, dragging his friend Jacob Mills with him to search on foot. They never found her.

"I just remember him being heartbroken," Mills says.

D'Angelo had her maybe a year, and she was about that old. A full year later, when Mills and D'Angelo were playing on the playground, Mills remembers D'Angelo suddenly blurting out: "Hey, do you want to go look for Diamond?"

Mills was shocked, but quickly realized his friend was "dead serious."

"D, it's been a year," Mills told him. "I'm pretty sure she's gone."

Diamond was tough to replace -- for emotional reasons, and for practical ones. Russell's childhood was all moves: to the suburbs of Louisville, to prep school in Florida for most of high school, to Ohio State.

Throughout, Russell kept his focus. And his focus has been squarely on man's best friends. "D-Russ loves them and he takes them and he treats them like they're people," says Kelsey Mitchell, a star forward for the Buckeyes' women's basketball team. "He talks to them. I used to be like, 'D-Russ, this is not a person.'"

SHORTLY AFTER RUSSELL was drafted No. 2 overall out of Ohio State in the summer of 2015, the first thing he did was purchase a Great Dane puppy. He named him Louis. And then, through the referral of his agent, Russell was visited in his Westside apartment by the man who would become the young Laker's puppy guru. Epi Gumatay, 43, is a professional dog trainer with 23 years' experience, and he runs the Glendale Pet Resort.

When Gumatay met Russell, he noticed something different about him. On an iPad, Russell carefully jotted down every instruction Gumatay shared about how to take care of Louis. He was respectful, attentive, deeply curious. From that day on, they talked and exchanged text messages nearly daily, Russell seeking every tip, big and small.

At one point, when Gumatay told Russell to keep a leash handy when walking Louis, Russell replied that he actually didn't have to worry because Louis never left his side. Gumatay took note. "There are people," Gumatay says, "that have that gift."

One day, Gumatay saw Russell in the lobby. Sometimes, Gumatay says, when Russell's hectic schedule allows, the guard shows up just to visit. It was nearly 6 p.m., and many were passing through, but Russell was stopping most everyone. "Oh, what kind of dog is that?" Russell would ask. And then he'd ask the next. And the next one after that.

"Knowing D'Angelo, he's quiet," Gumatay says. "I don't know how he is with his teammates. I only see him how he is with dogs. But ... when a dog is in the room, he opens up." Gumatay often sees people transformed in the presence of dogs, from canines who've helped those who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder to one instance when a dog helped wake someone from a coma. "The power of the animal is incredible. I have so many texts from [Russell]. He has so much on his plate with the team and everything, but he texts his dog trainer."

In time, Gumatay came to believe that if Russell didn't play basketball, the Lakers guard had an eye -- no, indeed a gift -- to work with and train dogs. But that notion is nothing new. In fact, Antonio had long believed something similar about his son's future. "I just had a feeling that it was going to be something with basketball or animals," Antonio says.

For some, dogs serve as both a passion and outlet; to those who know Russell, both are true. "I feel it just takes him away from everybody," said Jamie Johnson, a childhood friend. "I don't know what it is with him and dogs, but he just has his own personal relationship with them."

After about six months with Louis, Russell says, "I realized that dogs need partners, so I got a second dog" -- a Belgian Malinois he named Rio. Ultimately, he felt a change of heart and gave them both back to Gumatay, who found them another home. Then Russell got two Bernedoodles (a cross between Bernese Mountain dogs and poodles), a boy and a girl, both 10 weeks old, both hypoallergenic, non-shedding dogs: Molly and Max.

IT'S A PLEASANT spring morning in the creme de la creme neighborhood of Brentwood, not long after Kobe Bryant's 60-point finale in April, and officers at a Southern California-based police department -- who would later ask that, for tactical and security purposes, their department be generally identified as such -- are hunting a suspect.

Specifically, they're hunting a suspect in a soon-to-be-demolished mansion, and they're doing so while fighting through artificial haze pumped in from smoke machines provided by a special-effects technician who works for "The Walking Dead." The suspect is holed up in a closet. The officers identify themselves and present terms -- come out, peacefully, or else they'll send in their K-9 associate, a 100-pound Belgian Malinois, which looks a lot like a German Shepherd: muscular, regal, authoritative and armed with a feisty set of chompers.

The officers don't make this demand alone; D'Angelo Russell, who's right there alongside them, shouts it out, too. The suspect doesn't budge, so in runs the dog, before dragging the helpless man from the closet.

The "suspect" is Gumatay. It's a training operation -- one to help local law enforcement agencies train their K-9 units, and one that Russell has attended on multiple occasions.

Today, Russell, as always, is engaged. He showers Gumatay and the officers with questions about why the dogs do this or that, devouring every morsel of knowledge. "He was watching me work like a fan [would be] watching him," Gumatay says. And so Gumatay playfully offers Russell a chance to wear the protective suit, made of jute, a burlap-like material, to help withstand dog bites. Russell appears to consider the request -- the notion of potentially allowing a Belgian Malinois to sink its jaws, capable of delivering 195 pounds of bone-breaking force per square inch, onto the limbs of the Lakers' multimillion-dollar investment, a cornerstone of their future. "Um," Russell says after a beat, "I don't think the Lakers would want me to do that." Gumatay is only kidding, of course, but he notices how Russell isn't. If anything, Russell seems to feel right at home.