The setting for the event was The Lodge, the swanky strip joint off Northwest Highway owned by Dawn Rizos. But believe it or not, the No. 1 attraction at tonight’s cocktails-and-dinner bash there had four legs and answered to the name Mel. He’s one of about 50 pit bulls rescued a few years ago from Michael Vick’s notorious dog-fighting stable. Mel, who was used as “bait” to train the other dogs to attack, was later adopted out of Utah’s Best Friends Animal Society by Richard Hunter, a Dallas radio personality, and his wife Sunny. Sunny (shown here with Mel in photo by Jeanne Prejean) is the manager of VIP services at The Lodge.
The dinner was held to tout something called “Headlights & Hounds,” a bikini car and bike wash at the Lodge Saturday whose proceeds will benefit Best Friends. The noon to 6 p.m. event costs $20, and includes a good scrubbing by the Lodge dancers. (Of your vehicle.) Mel will be there, too, with Hunter, who addressed tonight’s gathering and noted one person who wasn’t in attendance: Dwaine Caraway, the then-Dallas mayor pro tem who famously presented Vick with a key to the city. “I invited [Caraway], but he couldn’t attend,” Hunter said drily. “He had a previous commitment … presenting a key to the city to Walker Railey.” Railey, of course, is the former Dallas minister who was acquitted of trying to strangle his wife in the 1990s.
