ohmidog!

Paris, with all its pooch-welcoming restaurants, is generally considered a pretty dog-friendly city, but some think it could do more, particularly when it comes to park space and access to public transportation for canines.

At least 100 dogs and their humans marched outside the Louvre Saturday in a demonstration demanding more of both, the Associated Press reported.

Organizers of the canine-citizen march dubbed “My Dog, My City” estimate about 200,000 dogs live in Paris, but say that the city lacks the dog-friendly public spaces of places like New York, London, Montreal and Brussels.

According to the city’s website, two of Paris’ 20 sections have only one reserved public park space for dogs and both require leashes.

(Photo: Remy de la Mauviniere / Associated Press)

Stopped at a roadblock, James Terry asked state troopers if he could let his two Siberian huskies out of the car so they wouldn’t become overheated.

A trooper agreed to tie the dogs to the bumper of a patrol car, but within 30 minutes, the trooper drove off to another call, dragging one of the dogs behind him.

Terry’s dog Lois had to be euthanized after suffering a broken pelvis and spine, according to the Albany Times Union.

The second dog survived.

“The trooper feels terrible,” said State  Police Capt. William  Keeler. “The owner is rightly upset.”

“I do plan on seeking justice for Lois,” said Terry, who was charged with driving with a suspended licensed. “She was the only innocent victim here.”

The incident happened Saturday as State Police conducted a roadblock to check on whether drivers were wearing seatbelts.

Terry, after he was stopped, was worried his dogs would overheat in his pickup truck, and asked a trooper if they could be let out. Because it was a shaded area, officials said, the trooper tied the dogs to his patrol car’s rear bumper, using the dog’s leashes.

When Terry learned he was being arrested for having a suspended license, he called his parents to pick up the dogs. Authorities said that the trooper, seeing Terry’s family had arrived, assumed they had taken the dogs when he returned to his vehicle and sped off to another call.

“He was under the belief that the dogs had been unsecured,” a state police spokesman said. “He  proceeded approximately 10 feet. Unfortunately, the dogs were  still secured.”

While the leash of the second dog, Liz, detached as the patrol car pulled away, the leash securing Lois to the patrol car did not. She was pulled under the Ford Crown Victoria cruiser and was run over by its rear wheels.

An internal investigation is being conducted, and the trooper will remain on duty pending its results.

When the accident occurred, Terry was handcuffed in a patrol car parked in front of the one to which his dogs were tied.

“I heard the screech of the car taking off,” he said. “I was in the cop car.  There was nothing I could do. I was screaming ‘Get me out of here!’ A cop came  over and let me out. I ran over and held Lois. I knew something was wrong. Lois  was crying, and her legs weren’t moving,”

Another trooper picked her up and took her and Terry to the Latham  Emergency Clinic, where veterinarians recommended euthanasia.

(Photo: Lori Van Buren / Times Union)

Farhad Manjoo doesn’t want to pet your dog.

In fact, he’d prefer it if you’d keep your dog to yourself — out of the park he wants to read in, away from the cafe where he enjoys his Frappuccino, and definitely not in the gym in which he works out.

It was a case of the latter that triggered a well-written, semi-playful, anti-dog diatribe he wrote for Slate last week.

Manjoo argued that dogs are getting too many privileges. He pointed out that not everybody enjoys their presence, cited health hazards they could conceivably pose, and suggested all those people who take their dogs everywhere start leaving them at home.

Not sharing one’s dog? To me, that’s the equivalent of hiding a Van Gogh behind an ironing board in the basement. Or putting a newfound cure for cancer in a time capsule. Or shielding your eyes — just to be safe — from a blazing sunset.

Still, we’d defend Manjoo’s preference to live life without somebody else’s dog in his face. That’s his right. It’s his loss, but it’s also his right.

Manjoo is Slate‘s technology columnist and the author of True Enough: Learning To Live in a Post-Fact Society. So it doesn’t surprise me — he being caught up in all things digital — that he has failed to catch on to or be captivated by the wonder of dogs.

Microchipping aside, dogs and technology are best kept separate. They don’t always get along, maybe because they are the antithesis of each other. Technology may be the cure for everything, but dogs are the cure for technology. We’ll get back to this point, but first let’s look at what Manjoo said — after an unwanted encounter with a Doberman inside his gym.

“The dog came up to me, because in my experience that’s what dogs do when you don’t want them to come up to you. They get up real close, touching you, licking you, theatrically begging you to respond… I guess I was fairly sure he wouldn’t snap and bite me, but stranger things have happened — for instance, dogs snapping and biting people all the time. 

“Why was this dog here? And why was no one perturbed that this dog was here?

“…No one was asking because no one could ask. Sometime in the last decade, dogs achieved dominion over urban America. They are everywhere now, allowed in places that used to belong exclusively to humans, and sometimes only to human adults: the office, restaurants, museums, buses, trains, malls, supermarkets, barber shops, banks, post offices… Dogs are frequently allowed to wander off leash, to run toward you and around you, to run across the baseball field or basketball court, to get up in your grill. Even worse than the dogs are the owners, who seem never to consider whether there may be people in the gym/office/restaurant/museum who do not care to be in close proximity to their dogs. …”

Manjoo admits to not being a dog person, but at least — unlike most anti-dog types — he has a sense of humor about it.

“It’s not that I actively despise mutts; I just don’t have much time for them, in the same way I don’t have time for crossword puzzles or Maroon 5,” he writes.

“But here’s my problem: There’s now a cultural assumption that everyone must love dogs. Dog owners are rarely forced to reckon with the idea that there are people who aren’t enthralled by their furry friends, and that taking their dogs everywhere might not be completely pleasant for these folks.”

And seldom, he points out, does anyone whose dog accosts him say they’re sorry.

“… I can promise you she won’t apologize for the imposition. Nor will she ask you if you mind her dog doing what he’s doing. Nor will she pull on its leash, because there won’t be a leash, this being an office, where dogs are as welcome as Wi-Fi and free coffee.”

The same holds true, he notes, at coffee houses.

Here we should point out that the dog pictured atop this post is mine, and that, in the photo, Ace is enjoying an iced coffee product at Starbucks, offered to him by a customer whose behavior indicated she wanted him to visit her table.

When I take Ace to a Starbucks, or most anywhere else, it’s usually pretty apparent who wants to meet him and who doesn’t, and I restrain him accordingly. I don’t have to compile any data or crunch any numbers, I can just tell. It’s not brain surgery, or computer science.

Even though most people go to Starbucks for the free Wi-Fi, or the expensive coffee, I’d estimate about one of two customers wants to meet my dog. Ace — and this isn’t true of every dog — has a way of figuring that out himself, and generally will avoid those who show no interest in him, unless they are in the process of eating a muffin or pastry, in which case he’s willing to overlook the fact they may not be dog lovers.

What makes the numbers even more impressive is that 8 of every 10 customers at your typical Starbucks are under the spell of their computer device and not at all cognizant of what’s going on around them.

Ace is sometimes able to break that spell, at least he does for me.

As for me, I’d rather have access to Fido then Wi-Fi anyday. Fido will soothe me. Wi-Fi will likely, at some point, make me angry and frustrated. Fido will focus me. Wi-Fi will distract me. Wi-Fi will accost me with uninvited and intrusive messages, and send me alerts, and remind me of all the things I need to do today.  Fido will remind me all those things aren’t really that important and can wait until tomorrow. Wi-Fi will take me out of the moment; Fido will keep me in it. Wi-fi has no soul. Fido does, and his presence allows our souls – those of us who have them — to be refreshed. Dogs keep us from becoming an entirely manic society.

No one, if I have my laptop on, will want to come up and pet it, except maybe Farhad Manjoo, who — while not having the least bit of interest in my dog — is probably curious about my gigabytes and apps.

On this much I will agree with Manjoo: There are dog owners who seem unaware that not everybody will delight in their dog, oblivious to the fact that some might find their dog annoying and intrusive. Similarly, though, there are parents of children who don’t realize not everybody will delight in their antics. Similarly, too, there are grown-up people who fail to realize that they themselves are annoying and who we’d prefer not to have inflicted upon us.

Unfortunately, we can’t just ban them. Our choices are limited. We could work on being tolerant –  of all ages, sizes, shapes and species, despite their noise, intrusiveness and abrasiveness levels. Or we could go somewhere else. Or we could complain.

Sometimes, when visiting a Starbucks or other coffee place, I wonder if I should lodge an official complaint with management about Wi-Fi — objecting to its omnipresence, and how it seems to be turning people into keyboard-pushing zombies.

“No,” I’d say, “I’m not technically allergic to it, but I’m uncomfortable with it near. I’ve had some bad experiences with it. Sometimes it bites people when they least expect it, and I’m pretty sure it harbors germs.”

“But it’s wireless,” the manager might say.

“Exactly,” I’d say with a huff. “Put a leash on it.”

We’re not big on dogs being tethered to anything — posts, parking meters, even, except when necessary, humans.

And, entanglements sometimes being easy to get into and hard to get out of, it’s definitely not a good idea, generally speaking, to leash them to each other.

But this was brief, and supervised, and kinda cute.

Ace was recruited into babysitting duty over the weekend when, on the quatro de Mayo, we went to a Cinco de Mayo party at a former neighbor’s home.

Two other guests brought their little dogs. First came a pipsqueak of a pup named Penny who, after greeting everyone, still had lots of energy to spare. With a fairly busy road nearby, it was suggested Penny be tethered to a somewhat stationary object — namely Ace.

We’re not recommending you try this at home, but Ace is pretty mellow, gentle with the little ones and had met Penny before.

Plus, he was used to being latched to smaller dogs, having shepherded a dachshund friend several times without stepping on him.

Plus, he was so happy to return to his old neighborhood he wasn’t about to dart off, or even saunter off, dragging two little balls of fluff behind him.

Plus, I was watching over it all pretty closely.

Ace didn’t seem to mind the arrangement a bit, and Penny put up with it, sometimes walking along in stride with him. She figured out pretty quickly, when she did try to scoot of on her own, that it was hopeless.

After exploring together, Ace decided to lay down, and Penny settled nearby, finding a stick to chew on.

About then, Charlie arrived, another fluffy little dog — slightly larger than Penny. That led to an energy surge, at least among the smaller, younger dogs, so we decided to hook Charlie to Ace, too.

As Charlie and Penny frolicked, Ace monitored them for a while, then worked the crowd, begging for food and ignoring the occasional little tugs on his harness.

Eventually, Charlie and Penny were freed, and they were so into playing, they didn’t go anywhere, except in tiny circles around each other — ignoring their babysitter entirely.

I think Ace liked briefly having a mission.

Like all good things though, it came to an end.

Officials in Abington, Mass., say the town’s “crown jewel” has a Problem, with a capital P and that rhymes with D and that stands for dog.

They say dogs are posing a “serious health problem” especially around the pool area at Island Grove Park, which is often referred to as “the crown jewel of Abington.”

Dogs aren’t legally allowed to be unleashed at the park – but dogs are running  loose, nipping at guests, and “depositing feces and urine in the public pool area,” according to the Enterprise, in Brockton.

“It’s an absolute health issue,” Park and Recreation Superintendent Mark Chirokas said at a meeting of the town selectmen. “It’s frustrating.”

Park and Recreation Commission Chairman Russell Esau said the problem came to a head in September when the board received “a complaint” from a resident.

That led to installing signs around the pool area and at Eager Beaver summer camp, also on the park grounds, reminding pet owners to clean up and keep their dogs on leashes.

But the signs don’t seem to have worked too well — especially at night when large numbers of dog walkers descend on the park.

Since 1975, the town has banned dogs from being in any town park or water unless they are kept on a leash, subject to a $100 fine.

Town Manager John D’Agostino said on top of legal concerns about possible dog bites, many dog owners do not clean up after their dogs properly.

“What happens is (excrement) is being deposited in barrels. Then it becomes a health issue with the employees who have to clean the barrels,” he said

The selectmen are looking at a couple of solutions, including the obvious one: BUILD A DOG PARK!

But they seemed more intent on the idea of cracking down on scofflaws by increasing the hours that the town’s animal control officer works from 10 hours a week to 15, and requiring the five new hours be spent handing out warnings and citations at Island Grove.

The selectman did say they will at least  look at the idea of putting a dog park on a 64-acre town property known as Griffin’s Dairy.

As one person pointed out in a comment on the Enterprise article, there’s no  dog park in Abington — not a one, even though there are 15 town parks, fields and facilities listed on the recreation department’s website.

“Typically more than 50% of households own pets and many of those are dogs, so please tell me why a town like Abington can’t set aside a small area for taxpayers with dogs?” the commenter wrote. “Come on Abington, make some room for your dogs!”

(Photo: From the Friends of Abington Park website)

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.

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 lot of the conclusions of a new dog walking study conducted in the Czech Republic fall into the category of “what else is new:”

Leashed dogs are likely to act more aggressively. Dogs, researchers ascertained, like to sniff other dogs, especially those of the opposite sex.

But here’s one fascinating finding that I think is worth much more research: Dogs being walked by men are four times more likely to threaten and bite other dogs.

That’s pretty stunning, and merits further investigation — into dog, into man, but even moreso into dogs’ abilities to read our emotions, better even, perhaps, than we can read our own.

The study, to be published in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science, found that the sex of the owner had the biggest effect on whether or not a dog will threaten or bite another dog.

“We propose that the occurrence of threat and biting in dogs on a walk may have some connection with aggressive tendencies and/or impulsivity in people,” Petr Rezac and his team at Mendel University wrote.

They add: “Dogs are able to perceive subtle messages of threat emitted by another dog. Simultaneously, dogs are unusually skilled at reading human social and communicative behavior.”

Rezac is an associate professor in the Department of Animal Morphology, Physiology and Genetics. He and his colleagues studied close to 2,000 dog-dog interactions on owner-led walks held in the city of Brno, according to Discovery News.

What they observed the most, as you might expect, was sniffing and peeing. And most of the researchers’ conclusions are already known by anyone with a dog:

Males sniff females more often, males and females prefer play with each other than with members of their own sex, adult males mark the most, puppies play together more than twice as often as adults, dogs prefer to play with similarly sized individuals and dogs tend to be more aggressive when restrained by a leash.

(Scientists, meanwhile, according to my own observations, are prone to sniffing, scratching their heads and marking their turf. They don’t have time to play, and tend to be aggressive when their funding is threatened. They should almost always be leashed.)

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, in the process of trying to figure dogs out, man learned a thing or two about his own self?

I think much helpful-to-humans information is there, inside dogs, but it mostly goes untapped — because we speak different languages, because we don’t often look for it, and for reasons of focus. Scientists, like detectives building a case against a suspect, sometimes develop tunnel vision, to the extent that bigger, broader potential revelations, and sometimes ethics and boundaries, go ignored.

The Czech study, for example, leads me to wonder whether, in addition to studying the dogs, scientists might want to pay closer attention to those dog walkers, and all the baggage and pent-up hostilities they may be carrying around — whether they have those emotions on a leash, or too tight a leash, or no leash at all.

I don’t think it’s a Czech thing. And, in my experience, it’s not a gender thing. Generally, I’ve found that the most tightly wound pet owners — male or female — have the most unpredictable dogs.

Dogs, in large part, mirror their owners.

But their powers go far beyond mere reflection. Let’s go back to those pent-up hostilities. Sometimes they are undectable to psychiatrists. Sometimes they are undectable to the person they are pent-up in. Yet dogs have the power to sense them, and sometimes to calm them.

I’m not saying dogs know more than scientists — or am I? — only that dogs sense and know things we don’t. If only we could figure out a non-intrusive and polite way to ask the dogs to share with us all the things they have the power to sense — things that, even with all our scientific instruments, we humans can’t.

Maybe then — leashed or unleashed, male or female, dog or human — we could all just get along.

(Photo: By John Woestendiek)

(PS: The dogs pictured above were playing, not fighting)

For 35 years, dogs have been officially banned from downtown Santa Cruz.

(Which is why we didn’t stop there during our travels across America.)

Now, with conditions, the California coastal city may let them back, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reports.

The impetus? Not so much love for dogs as love for sales — specifically, those of downtown merchants who say they could use the boost, and that visitors who arrive with dogs often pull out once they learn their dogs aren’t welcome.

At the request of merchants, the Santa Cruz City Council on Tuesday will consider temporarily overturning the rule banning dogs on Pacific Avenue. The Sentinel says there appear to be more than enough votes to make it happen.

The council is expected to approve a three-month trial, during which licensed, leashed and vaccinated dogs would be allowed on Pacific Avenue and several feeder streets during daylight hours.

If passed, the revised ordinance would kick in within 30 days and be made permanent after Nov. 30, unless the council changed its collective mind.

“I think the economic benefits to our downtown merchants will be most welcome,” said Councilman Tony Madrigal, who owns a miniature dachshund named Shortie and is one of three council members proposing the rule change. “My hope is that by allowing dogs on a trial basis that more people will feel welcome to come downtown with their pets, many of whom they consider part of the family.”

The Santa Cruz Downtown Association board voted unanimously this spring to pursue a change.

The city banned dogs on the Pacific Garden Mall in 1976 and side streets several years later after numerous complaints about out-of-control dogs and unscooped poop. Merchants may allow dogs inside, but dogs are not permitted on the street, which, short of beaming your dog in, would seem to make it difficult to get them into a store.

The city council will hold a discussion on instituting the trial period Tuesday night.

During the trial period, the ban would be lifted for three-months in the area bounded by Water, Laurel, Cedar and Front streets, and including the Town Clock and Scope Park.

The rule change would not affect dog bans in effect on some beaches and at the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf.

Reynolda — though it lacks any leash-free areas — is a great place to spend time with your dog.

You don’t want to take him or her to Reynolda House, an art museum now featuring an exhibit by famed railroad photographer O. Winston Link.

And you might want to avoid the  formal part of Reynolda Gardens.

But most of  the rest of what used to be the vast country estate of R.J.Reynolds, the history of which we told you about in this earlier post, is fair game for dogs on leashes, including at least one restaurant and the K-9 Doggie Bakery and Boutique.

Not all the shops, galleries and restaurants in Reynolda Village welcome your dog inside, but we noted at least one that put out a basket of dog treats on its doorstep.

 The sign said “take one.” 

 Ace, before I could pull him away, helped himself to three.

Our favorite part of Reynolda, though — well, mine anyway, Ace might prefer the complimentary dog biscuits — is the nature.

There are miles of trails that wind through open meadows and shady groves, and alongside the remnants of what used to be a lake.  Lake Katherine, as it was known, is more of a marsh now, but a great place to spot birds.

The trails are a great way to work up an appetite, or walk off a meal — and there are two restaurants on the grounds of Reynolda, at least one of which is dog-friendly. Simply Yummy, allows dogs in its outside seating area.

As for the other, the Village Tavern …  well it’s a bit fuzzy. The employee who answered the phone, when I asked if dogs were allowed in the outdoor seating areas, answered, “If they’re sublime.”

“Sublime?” I repeated. When I asked him to elaborate, he put the manager on the phone, and she referred me to corporate headquarters, where a member of the staff said only service dogs are allowed

There is no admission to get on the  grounds of Reynolda, and it is open during daylight hours year-round.