ohmidog!

The push to create a dog friendly beach in the California town of San Clemente — on a trial basis, and only for a few hours a day — goes before the city council next week.

The council is considering a proposal to let dogs run without a leash, from 4 to 10 a.m., on part of a city beach, between Dije Court and Mariposa Point, for a one-year trial period.

In addition, it’s looking at allowing leashed dogs in every city park, except for playgrounds, sports fields and areas with synthetic-turf, according to the Orange County Register.

The issue is expected to draw a crowd at Tuesday’s City Council meeting at 6 p.m. at City Hall.

San Clemente dog owners feel like “their dogs are prisoners in the city … it’s either the sidewalk or the street or their yard,” said Don Slater, founder of Friends of San Clemente Dog Beach. The organization has printed 2,000 fliers, urging supporters of a dog beach to email the five City Council members in advance and testify at Tuesday’s meeting. The city’s lone dog park gets too crowded, Slater said. “They can chase a ball or roam around,” he said, “but they can’t play in the ocean.”

Desperate Paws of Orange County, a dog club that claims more than 1,100 members, has already written to the City Council asking for longer hours at the proposed dog beach. The club’s founders, Stephen and Brandi Terry, suggest unrestricted hours from the last Saturday of October until the last Saturday of April and, in the warmer months, 4 to 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. to dark.

The Terrys say San Clemente is missing out on tourist dollars by not allowing dogs on the beach, and point to Huntington Beach’s dog beach — where dogs have been allowed for more than a decade — as an example of how dog friendliness can increase revenue for the city and local businesses.

San Clemente’s Coastal Advisory Committee voted 5-2 to oppose a dog beach. The city’s Beaches, Parks & Recreation Commission supports a limited hours experiment, though on a different beach.

Parks Commissioner Eric Swartz says the city could be held liable for dog bites, and other opponents say that San Clemente’s limited beach space is too precious to allow dogs to use it.

Commissioner Tom Wicks countered that the benefits of a dog beach outweigh the concerns and argued that households with dogs have rights too.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

A German shepherd chased a mountain lion up a tree Tuesday morning in Los Altos.

Cody, an 85-pound shepherd, was smaller, but apparently more fearless than the 110-pound cat, which sought refuge 30 feet up an oak tree at an upscale home in Los Altos.

That’s where was the California Department of Fish and Game found him, and decided to leave him alone, according to NBC. The mountain lion eventually came down the tree and left the area.

When Jim Berger was 12 years old he asked Frank Lloyd Wright to do for his dog what the architect did for his dad — design him a house.

The boy asked Wright, in a 1956 letter, to design a house for his dog, Eddie, that ”would go with our house” — it too being a Frank Lloyd Wright design that his father spent 20 years building in San Anselmo, Calif.

Wright, in keeping with his cantankerous image, wrote back that he was “too busy,” but suggested the boy write him again next year.

Berger wrote back the next November, and this time Wright responded with a full set of working drawings for a triangular-shaped, four-square-foot dog house, to be built of the mahogany and cedar scraps left over from the main house.

According to Architects and Artisans, young Berger didn’t build the house. But, after he joined the army, his father and brother did, completing it in 1963.  After his father died in 1973, Jim’s mother would dispose of it, dropping it off at the dump.

“Frankly, it’s the best story ever about Wright,” says Michael Miner, who’s taking a reconstructed version of the original dog house on a coast-to-coast tour to promote “Romanza,” his film on Wright’s work in California.

“People think he was this curmudgeonly old architect, but here he was, breaking down and doing something wonderful for a 12-year-old.”

Miner asked Jim Berger and his brother Eric to build the reconstructed version in 2010 — and they agreed. (Miner filmed the constuction process, and included it in “Romanza.”)

Miner says the original dog house never got much use — not by Eddie, or subsequent dogs in the Berger family. Eddie, he says, “didn’t like it – he liked to sleep by the warmth coming out of the front door.”

A California woman has been charged with driving her car into a Los Angeles County park employee after being warned three times to put her dog on a leash.

The county worker, who was not named by the Sheriff’s Department, was treated for leg injuries and released from a hospital hours after the Friday incident.

Arune Kavaliauskaite, 28, of Altadena, was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, according to the Los Angeles Times

The Sheriff’s Department said Kavaliauskaite was warned repeatedly after her dog was spotted running without a leash at the Eaton Canyon Nature Center in Pasadena.

After the third warning, Kavaliauskaite became angry, grabbed her dog and got into her car, the sheriff’s department said in a statement.

“The victim was standing a short distance away from the vehicle taking a picture of Ms. Kavaliauskaite in the vehicle for future identification. Ms. Kavaliauskaite accelerated forward with the vehicle into the victim striking her in the legs and knocking her back into a parked vehicle,” the statement said.

Kavaliauskaite drove away from the scene but was arrested at her home later that evening.

A new twist in the case of the Tasered dog walker: After a park ranger informed him she would use her Taser if he walked away, Gary Hesterberg informed her he had a heart condition.

She, seconds later, as he turned her back to her, fired anyway, according to a witness quoted in a Patch.com report.

Given the offense Hesterberg was being detained for was an unleashed dog, given the park ranger’s mission that day was supposedly “educating” dog owners about the new policy, we feel her use of a stun gun falls clearly into the category of over-reacting.

Her use of force was not just unnecessary, it was potentially deadly, and even though Hesterberg originally supplied her with a phony name, even if he may have been argumentative, even if he was aware that the park service had started requiring leashes in Rancho Corral de Tierra two months earlier, the bottom line is 50,000 volts of electricity for one unleashed dog doesn’t add up to anything but brutality.

Howard Levitt, spokesman for the park service, said Hesterberg repeatedly tried to flee the scene, and that the encounter between the dog walker and the park ranger ”moved into a different realm” when Hesterberg gave her a fake name.

“He didn’t have ID and gave a name that turned out to not be his actual name … In checking that out — it’s standard procedure to run somebody’s name when you’re dealing with someone who might be a danger — she asked him to remain on the scene, as we understand it, and more than once he refused to stay there,” Levitt said

If Hesterberg had been placing strange packages under the Golden Gate Bridge, that would be one thing. But he was walking his dogs. There is no  reason — other than over zealous law enforcement, which isn’t a good reason at all — that should escalate into a potentially deadly encounter.

Given a choice of worst case scenarios, I think allowing Hesterberg to go home, and catching him, if it’s really all that important, the next day would be preferable to potentially executing a man for an unleashed dog — if not for reasons of logic, then at least for the park service’s public image.

Congresswoman Jackie Speier is asking for an investigation into last weekend’s arrest of a dog walker who was Tasered by a park ranger in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area near Montara.

Speier sent a letter to GGNRA Superintendent Frank Dean expressing her concerns and requesting information about the arrest of Gary Hesterberg, of Montara, who was walking his dogs off-leash when stopped by the park ranger.

“Many of my constituents are understandably angered by what appears to be an excessive use of force by a park ranger,” Speier said “From the information I have to date, it does not appear that the use of a Taser was warranted.”

Speier worked closely with state officials on the use of tear gas, stun guns and pepper spray while she was in the California legislature, a local NBC affiliate reported.

She says she has requested information about training in Taser usage for park rangers and also about how the public was informed about dog policy changes at Rancho Corral de Tierra.

According to witnesses, the dog owner — who had one of his two dogs leashed when he was stopped — repeatedly asked why he was being detained, and eventually told the ranger to cite him or he was going to walk away.

“He started to walk away and she told him that she would Tase him if he walked another step,” one witness said. When the man turned, the ranger deployed her Taser, causing him to fall to the ground.

Advocate groups for dog owners, including Montara Dog and DogPAC of San Francisco,  have asked the National Park Service to investigate the incident and to cease ticketing dog walkers in Rancho Corral de Tierra.

GGNRA officials said the dog walker provided false information to the ranger and refused the ranger’s repeated orders to remain at the scene while his identity was confirmed.  They said they are are reviewing the incident.

The 3,800-acre property was transferred to the park service by the Peninsula Open Space Trust in December. While dogs were once allowed off leash there, the park service changed the rules, requiring all dogs be on leashes.

A National Parks ranger zapped a northern California resident with a Taser Sunday afternoon after an argument about walking his dog without a leash in a newly added section of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

The incident occurred around 4:45 p.m. when the man was walking two dogs — one leashed — at the Rancho Corral de Tierra open space, near the southern edge of McNee Ranch State Park.

A ranger working for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area stopped the man and an argument about his off-leash dog escalated, according to the Half Moon Bay Review.

The Rancho Corral area was an off-leash dog-walking spot until December when the National Park Service took over and required all dogs to be on a leash.

The San Francisco Chronicle identified the dog walker as Gary Hesterberg, of Montara, a coastal town south of San Francisco.

The ranger, whose name was being withheld by authorities, used her stun gun on Hesterberg because he continued walking despite orders to stop, Park Service spokesman Howard Levitt told the Chronicle.

Hesterberg was arrested by San Mateo County sheriff’s deputies and was booked for investigation of failing to obey a lawful order.

According to one witness, the dog walker dared the ranger to arrest him; he was walking away when the ranger pulled out her Taser.

The man collapsed on the ground, and the ranger began shouting at him to turn over so she could handcuff him. As a crowd gathered, the man shouted out his home address so that someone could take his dogs home.

A California man was arrested Thursday on charges of killing a neighbor’s Chihuahua — with one swing of a golf club.

Barbara Hitchman said she found her dog, Lily, lying on the ground while driving through her neighborhood in Riverside. A neighbor told Hitchman that she saw another neighbor, 58-year-old Larry Jaurequi, strike the dog.

“She said he lined up as if he was doing a golf shot, and he just whopped her, and she said she went so far in the air, she did three summersaults and hit the pavement,” Hitchman told KABC in Riverside.

Hitchman went across the street to confront the man.

“I said, ‘You’re insane, you’re a psycho, you need locking away,’ and he said, ‘Try it, you better get out of here too.’”

Hitchman said Jaurequi also told her that her dog should not have been on the loose. Lily had escaped sometime earlier that day.

Jaurequi was arrested that night.

“I don’t believe this dog was a threat to this man in any way, he just for unknown reasons attacked the dog with a golf club,” said Riverside County Sheriff’s Department Cpl. Courtney Donowho.

Lily died at a veterinary clinic Friday morning.

Former state senator Tom Hayden urged California Gov. Jerry Brown not to repeal a state law that requires shelters to keep dogs and cats six days before euthanizing them.

Hayden posted a video online urging Gov. Brown – an avowed dog lover who features his Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Sutter, on the official governor’s website – to take a look at his own dog before repealing the legislation.

“Governor, I see you’re a dog owner. I can tell from the publicity that you love that dog, your wife loves that dog,” said Hayden, who wrote the 1998 bill while he was in the senate.  ”So stop and think: Thousands of dogs and cats are put to death needlessly every year … I urge you to look at your dog before you allow this bill that protects animals to die.”

The law lengthened the time animal shelters must hold stray animals before euthanizing them, generally from three days to six days. Its edicts were suspended by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2009.

The shelter law is one of about 30 local government mandates Gov. Brown is proposing to repeal next fiscal year to save money, according to the Sacramento Bee.

The state estimates it would save about $46 million from the shelter mandate alone.

How far would you go to have your dog proclaimed the world’s ugliest?

For some people the answer would be not very far at all.

For others, it’s all the way to Petaluma, California.

There, every year, dogs and their owners (emphasis on their owners) compete to be crowned the “Ugliest Dog in the World.”

If that’s not worth a documentary, then what is?

“Worst in Show“ takes viewers into the world of the ugly dog circuit, and behind the scenes of the 2010 “World’s Ugliest Dog” contest, showing both its sweet side and its highly competitive one.

Filmmakers John Beck and Don R. Lewis document not just the “ugliness” of the dogs, but the sometimes obsessive nature of the people behind them.

The movie features Pabst, 2009′s winner, who has a 2-inch underbite; Rascal, an African Sand Dog who has been on several television shows; Icky, a nearly hairless 6-month old rescued Chinese Crested whose owner shaved his head into a matching mohawk for the event; and Winston, who bears a scar across his head from Hurricane Katrina. His owner, Ashley, hopes winning the contest will spread the word about rescue dogs,  particularly those who, because of their unconventional looks, have trouble being adopted.

‘Worst in Show’ provides some insight into what we call ugliness, what we call beauty, what we call fame and how far we’ll go to get it. All in all, the classiest participants are the dogs. But look hard enough and you can find some of the more redeeming qualities of our species as well.