ohmidog!

After years of dragging its paws, the city of Baltimore has apparently caught on to the benefits of dog parks: It hopes to build four within the next two years.

That’s stunning news (not to mention our first “exclusive”). Up to now, the only dog park in the city has been the Canton Dog Park, and it was built strictly with donations. Up to now, the city has required any group interested in starting a dog park not just to pay for the whole thing itself, but to jump through a series of hoops so complex that most efforts to get city approval for a dog park have fizzled out over time.

Last night, though, city officials told leaders of the Locust Point Dog Park group, which has been working and raising money for 18 months to establish a fenced-in dog area in Latrobe Park, that the project had  finally been approved — and that the city was going to build it.

Mayor Sheila Dixon would reportedly like to see 4 dog parks built in the next two years, and city officials have been meeting with dog park designers, including the ones who put together the Chelsea Waterside dog park in New York.  

Mayor Dixon is expected to hold a press conference to announce the new dog park next month.

Currently the only official dog park in Baltimore — the only public place where a dog can legally be off his or her leash — is Canton Dog Park.

The news represents a huge turnaround in the city’s thinking, and it’s also a reflection of the hard work put in by the Locust Point Dog Park organization, other dog park groups, such as Patterson Park’s, and backers who have pushed for the project to be become a reality, including City Councilman Ed Reisinger. The dog park had also gotten support from the Abell Foundation and developer Mark Sapperstein.

Barbara Wilson, head of the Locust Point Dog Park group, said construction will likely begin in the spring. She said the group still plans to hold its montly meeting Monday (6:30 p.m. at the Locust Point Recreation Center), and will continue its fundraising efforts.

While the city will pay for building the park, the organization will be responsible for its maintenance.

At the end of summer in Howard County, the recreation and parks folks do something I wish Baltimore’s would: They open up a pool to dogs.

This year, it’s the pool at the Roger Carter Recreation Center, 3676 Fels Lane, in Ellicott City, MD.  On Saturday, Sept. 6, $10 will get you, a friend and your dog into the pool, from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m.

Registration is required, which you can do by going to the Howard County Recreation & Parks web site. At the HCR&P site, do a search for session 3003.101.

For other activities to partake in with your pooch, visit our newly added “Doggie doings” page.

Ten thousand years of dog evolution have led not just to more intelligent dogs, but to dogs with more empathy and more finely honed senses of right and wrong, a series of new studies indicate.

Because of the way owners have selected smarter and more empathic pets, dogs now appear to have a limited “theory of mind” –  the capacity that enables one to understand the desires, motivations and intentions of others, New Scientist reported yesterday.

And what has traditionally been dismissed as anthropomorphism — attributing human traits and feelings to animals — may not be that at all. Instead, dogs, as their communications with humans evolves, may actually be taking on those traits and becoming more like humans.

Whether that’s a good thing is open to argument.

At the first Canine Science Forum in Budapest, Hungary, a few weeks ago scientists outlined several experiments showing how dogs, through thousands of years of interacting with humans, are reflecting feelings and thought processes once thought strictly human, the Telegraph of London reported yesterday.

Marc Bekoff from the University of Colorado at Boulder, for example, thinks dogs have developed a moral compass. Rough play between dogs, he says, rarely escalates into full-blown fighting, indicating that dogs don’t just abide by a set of unspoken rules. but that they expect others to do the same.

Dogs may have a sense of justice, Friederike Range from the University of Vienna, reported. Her experiments, in which one pooch was given a treat and another denied it, shows they may have something akin to a sense of fairness.

“Dogs show some aversion to inequity,” she says. “I prefer not to call it a sense of fairness, but others might.”

In research at Kyoto University, Akiko Takaoka played dogs recordings of unfamiliar voices – both male and female – with each voice followed by a photo of a human face on a screen. If the gender of the face did not match that of the voice, the dogs stared longer, a sign that the image did not match their expectations.

Meanwhile, Dr Juliane Kaminski at the University of Cambridge has examined how dogs can use human gestures such as pointing and gazing to find hidden food or toys. “Domestication seems to have shaped dogs in a way which enables them to use these gestures from as early as six weeks,” she said.

The full New Scientist article is available with a subscription.

I’ve never been real big on “best of” lists. They’re sort of the grown-up equivalent of the cliquish high school in-crowd (head cheerleader, quarterback, etc.) making our minds up for us — whether it’s about what the prom theme is going to be, who can sit at what lunch table, or what constitutes cool.

I’ve been even less big on them since I made last year’s “Best of Baltimore.” *

Nevertheless, Baltimore Magazine’s picks for 2008 ** are out and we feel it is our duty to pass their crack staff’s dog-related choices on to you, so you don’t have to fork over $3.95 for the August issue.

For best pet store, Baltimore Magazine chose Howl, formerly known as “Chow, Baby!” up until pressure from the Purina company prompted owner Robin McDonald to change the name this year. The magazine called Howl, at 3531 Chestnut Avenue, “a Whole Foods for pets.” It offers a wide variety of healthy dog food, and also houses an obedience school for dogs, B-more Charming.

The magazine bestowed best groomer honors on Kerrie Grudziecki, of the Reisterstown Boarding Kennel Pet Resort and Spa, 14454 Old Hanover Road in Reisterstown. The magazine said Grudziecki “is great at calming nervous first timers,” and offers a full line of grooming and spa treatments for your dog.

For the top dog in doggie lodging, the magazine picked PetSmart’s Pet Hotel, 9041 Snowden River Parkway in  Columbia.  “… With its airy atriums and suites, hypoallergenic lambskin beds, and caring staff, (it) has all the amenities you’d expect in a fancy hotel, including an on-site pet hospital, ’room service’ and in-suite movies.”

For all those dog businesses that, like me, fell from grace and didn’t make the list this year – The Pretentious Pooch, Dogma, and Charm City Dogs were honored as last year’s ”best” – chin up, keep the faith and we still love you.

* In the 2007 “Best of Baltimore” I was voted “Best reason to cancel your Sun subscription … Well, it’s more than one reason: 7,497 of them, actually (we counted). That’s how many words were in Sun reporter John Woestendiek’s interminable seven-part series about his dog’s lineage. Now, we like dogs, we like John Woestendiek, and we even like lineages. But 7,497 words?”

** The 2008 Best of Baltimore list ran 17,065 words. (But who’s counting?)