July 24, 2017 – Deep Thoughts # 6 - Don't Let the Dog Days of Summer Go to the Dogs

No dogs off-leash allowed....

I am not a dog person.  There are a few I have liked over the years, sure.  There was my maternal grandmother Peg’s (RIP “Candy Gram”) beautiful Irish setter, who just sat in the sunporch and let us lavish him with attention.  There was Jet, my late Uncle Jack’s loyal, athletic, and oddly unvocal black lab—my first experience with a true hunting dog, running with wild enthusiasm through fields flushing birds for my dad and I to miss and Jack to take down with one long-distance shot and a sarcastic statement about my dad’s aptitude with a shotgun.  Besides his proclivity for humping legs (to his owner’s delight, no doubt) and, later in his old age, for odd carbuncle growth around his head, face, and neck, I’ll allow that Ward’s Bandit was a good dog.  I actually walked Dolf’s Triangle, a big, attention-loving Chessie, and cleaned up its poop when Dolf was on crutches after a shoveling accident.  I will concede Charleston, the three-legged mutt whom an old girlfriend nursed back to health after a run-in with a car, a subsequent amputation, and a little brain damage that made him sillier and removed further any killer instinct from his already mild-mannered genes.  More recently there’s Dewey the Golden, who is about as mitchy, goofy, and kind-hearted as his owner, Eric, who would no doubt be a golden retriever if reborn again for the first time (that or a full-sized poodle).  This list is short, as you can plainly see.  

Bad hips and disinterested kids

I had a dog for a while as a kid, a Brittany/Springer spaniel mix that I had dreams of turning into a bird dog, whether she would point like dad or flush like mom an unknown that I could work out by reading the right books, but she had bad hips and not much interest from the rest of the clan and so eventually ended up with another owner.  At least I hope she ended up with another owner.  My family has an infamous history with pets, from Bernard the turtle who got out and slowly found his demise under the blades of a lawnmower in a neighbor’s yard to Joey the cat, whose story still causes psychic pain for my sister.  Not until we got Lukas a cat for his ninth birthday, a funny runt tortie rescue named Lucy that I begrudgingly love, I suppose, did I fully understand what it would be like to lose a pet that you cared about.  It’s a lot like having a kid—something you can’t fully “get” until you have your own.  I feel guilt to this day because I was given hush money by my old man to take his feline namesake to “college,” a couple of imaginary female friends who wanted a cat that had worn out his welcome in our home by being downright surly and quick with the claws on any unsuspecting family member, neighbor, or random kid waiting innocently at the bus stop. In the torturous considerations leading up to me finally loading the uncharacteristically docile cat into my VW bug for his trip to college, I ran out of ideas and punted, leaving the poor thing with a feral colony at a country club nearby enough that I kept expecting an Incredible Journey scenario to unfold.  Sorry Amy!  Joe’s twenty dollars would have put a lot of gas in a VW at that time, and I was a poor college student given a thankless mission.

What anthropomorphism hath wrought?

Americans love them some dog.  If it’s not bad enough that we give valuable green space to let rich guys and aspirational mooks hit a white ball around chemically-induced landscapes and we still bury bodies in the ground as if we are not going to run out of ground—it’s simple arithmetic, no?—every new park now has to have a dog park too?  If you don’t give the dog owners a dog park, they will just take one, like Pastorius Park in Chestnut Hill. How much real estate, water, and other natural resources are used to make dog food, dog toys, dog clothing, dog exercise, dog enrichment, not to mention medical talent and supplies to treat dog illnesses, ethically treatable or not.  Are there studies done on the impact of dog waste or are all the earth-loving environmental scientists also pet owners, so they look the other way? 

“When dogs are leashed, it is easier for owners to find and remove their dog’s waste, which, when left in parks, can be washed into streams and waterways. Pet waste contains high levels of nutrients and ammonia that are released when it washes into creeks during rain events. These pollutants reduce water quality and increase algae growth and reduce oxygen levels in the water, which is particularly harmful to fish during warm months when water temperatures rise.” - Maura McCarthy, executive director of Friends of the Wissahickon

I usually don’t lose sleep over the carbon footprint of dogs, but I do get my panties in a bunch about how they help destroy trout streams, endanger wildlife, and inconvenience the rest of the non-dog-loving world—all because the vast majority of dog owners who frequent the Philadelphia area’s parks are scofflaws, and we don’t have the law enforcement or any power to curb their enthusiasm for watching their domesticated animals run “free” in the woods.  It’s gotten so bad that the Friends of the Wissahickon (FOW) tried a grass roots PR campaign and, with its trail ambassadors, a low risk stop and pamphlet program, which based on my unscientific though frequent (I do amass quite a random sampling of fishing trips to the Wissahickon, mind you) research has not yet worked in Wissahickon Park, but may be gaining traction at the aforementioned Pastorius Park.  I saw at least 8 dogs swimming off leash in the creek when I took Team Bucci fishing earlier this month, at least two chasing young David’s bobber after bounding into the water from the trail above. 

Lululemon lady had moxie, at least.

I still remember fishing a beautiful wintering hole on Valley Creek on a hushed, snowy January morning, when a lululemoned lady of luxury let her dog sprint across a leash-lawed township park, a field where her own kids probably played lacrosse or cricket or some other bourgeoisie pastime more years ago than her surgery-enhanced face would portend, and plunge into the creek, hoping to swim across to say hello to me.  “I am trying to give my dog a drink, and you are here fishing?” she said, as if I was somehow in the wrong with my fishing license and my law abiding angling.  I didn’t tell her that the creek is catch and release only because of PCB’s and that Fido probably should drink Evian instead, but she had it coming.  

Signs around Valley

Many of these folks in Philly and the suburbs know better.  They are bearded hippies in REI-chic who think they love nature and want to share its bounty with their children, who are not children but are instead domesticated animals.  I love my kid, but I have never expected the world to love him, but this is how dog lovers are in many cases.  Do you want to pet him?  No thanks, but maybe if he was on a leash, I would.  Would that make us both happen, then?  There are also the macho types whose dog bones are so small that they feel the need to show the world that they can control a big dog, like a pitbull, for example, without a leash.  “Oh, he’s fine,” some kid told me many years ago, as his big German shepherd mix jumped up on my expensive breathable waders with his claws and muddy feet and nicked my knuckle with a warning bite when I pushed him to the ground.  I am not afraid of dogs, but maybe I should be a little.  My wife was mauled as a kid and has, unfortunately, passed her anxiety and disinterest in dogs onto our son.  It doesn’t help that Lukas can’t walk home from the bus stop because a bad dog owner up the street runs his dog every day, off leash, at the exact hour that the kids are coming home.  He thinks he can control her, but he walks with a cane and has no leash nearby even if he was able to hobble to fetch it.  The dog has bitten joggers and ran out in front of the school bus and cars on numerous occasions.  When we called the police, the young officer stopped on the way back down the street after his visit with the offender and said, “What do you want me to do?  He’s just an old man?”   How about enforce the law when actually present during a violation, like you are now, champ—sorry Officer Champ?

Feral dogs do scare me, however, especially since I do hike into SGL’s without a gun.  When my dad was a bow hunter, he was treed by a pack of dogs for hours until he finally put an arrow in one and they scattered long enough to allow him to get back to his truck.  Perhaps pepper spray would be more humane?  I wonder what would happen if while walking a bridle trail in Fairmount Park I suddenly felt threatened and maced a dog?  It has never come to that, yet, but I read increasing numbers of reports of attacks on humans and other dogs.  In fact, the aforementioned Pastorias Park that was co-opted as a dog park by neighbors was the site of such an attack and subsequent response from police and the Friends of Pastorias Park.  I know why this is low on the Philadelphia police list of priorities, even in C-Hill where burglary may be the apex of issues, but why are so-called friends of green spaces blind to it too?  I commend the effort by the FOW, and this is why I finally posted a link here and wrote about this.  The boy and I are thinking about taking him and his outgoing and cute buddy Thomas on a stop and pamphlet tour a couple weekends this fall.  If you won’t do it for the wildlife, the birds who feed and nest near the ground, the deer flushed into busy roads, or the riparian flora trampled into muddy pulp, the water quality and, in turn, the fish who choke on the shit-enhanced algae blooms that follow storms, or me who wet wades in the Wissy once in a while, hopefully not with open cuts and abrasions, then maybe you’ll do it for the children?  I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, but the truth is that the law is on my side for good reason(s).  Here is the link to the full “open letter” published in some local papers some years back: Win Win When You Keep Your Dog on a Leash.