Food Fight! Can I have fries with that?

Tomorrow, the Board of Supervisors will be hearing an appeal on whether or not to stand by the Planning Commission's decision that disallows the drive through portion of the proposed McDonald's.  McDonald's says that's a deal breaker -- no drive through, no deal.  There's a whole lot of people weighing in on this, a petition has been passing around, there's a webpage with instructions of who and where to write,  http://www.nomcdonaldslososos.org  That page includes a link to a No Mc Los Osos Facebook page where you can leave comments.   Check it out and tomorrow we'll find out if we'll get fries with that.  Or not. 

Dog Park Party

Saturday, it was fund-raising, garage-sale day for El Chorro Dog Park.  This has been an annual fund-raiser for the park for several years now and is part of the city-wide Garage Sale Day.  El Chorro (located across from Cuesta College on Hwy 1) is maintained by volunteers so every penny of the sale went to the park. The town was packed and there were lots of treasures to be found.  Weather perfect, people out having a good time.

If you've got a dog and are a regular El Chorro visitor and want to get involved in supporting the park by volunteering, there's contact information posted on the kiosk at the park.  

Sunday's Blessings on Saturday

Rain or shine (in this case, rain), the CCC's are on the job.  These fabulous guys and gals, in keeping with the California Conservation Corps' mission of service to the community, showed up on their day off to help at El Chorro Dog Park.  Rain couldn't stop them and several hours later they had re-graded a large flood-prone area and restored the wood chips, thereby improving an already fabulous Dog Park.

These young men and woman are amazing.  All over the state, they're out there working to make our public lands -- parks, wilderness areas, forest, watershed resources -- safer, better and more beautiful, all for all of us!  So when you see these hardy crews at work, give them a shout-out of thanks!

They are a blessing.  Thanks CCC!  You're the best.

Your Saturday Trip

A few weeks ago, the Tribune did a photo story on the dedication of the new sundial that was built by the Chamber of Commerce Leadership SLO XX Group.  The dial is on a hill above the botanical gardens at El Chorro Regional Park (Off Hwy. 1 across from Cuesta College.) Although the dedication ceremony has already been held, when I asked at the Botanical Garden's main visitor's center, they said it wasn't quite finished so I presume they'll be adding better signage to make the path more visible and, no doubt, this being the Botanical Gardens, planting the area around the dial with native plants.   

But, no matter, getting there's an easyish stroll.  Park near the purple entryway to the botanical garden and bear rightish to get to the path that will lead to the greenhouses (to the rear, adjacent to the ball field fence/service road.)  Cut left past the last greenhouse on the road and head up the roadway towards a lot of little palm trees that have recently been planted on the hill.  On the leftish top of the hillside you're ascending, you'll see a weather vane. When you come to a fork, take the path that heads left off the road heading for that weather vane. (The path takes you through the little palm trees all hooked up to their drip water feeds.)

And voi la! There it is, a ring half in shadow, (Night, grey decomposed granite and flagstone) and half in sunlight (Day, an arc of "hour" segments in bright colored ceramic mosaic) that includes images of indigenous animals.

Inside the tree image are plaques arranged so that when you stand on the plaque for the current month, your shadow will be cast on the numbered hour arc. My watch said 1:20.  How cool is that?

From the top you can see the Botanical Garden's visitor center below.  When you come down from the hill, be sure to  wander through the gardens and take a closer look at all the wonderful varieties of plants growing (and identified) there. The path will lead to the visitor center, which is a beautifully constructed, eco-designed building (hay bale construction in part) that deserves a closer look.  They've got a gift store with water-thrifty native plants and other beautiful things for sale.  The center also hosts a variety of activities, concerts, lectures, and, of course, you can get further information on how you can become a member and support the Garden. Or get on their mailing list for notices of their many programs.  

And while you're there, if you're not familiar with El Chorro Park, take a meander through the park.  In the  back of the park (next to the off-leash dog park) is a nature hiking trail that leads deep into the wildlands of the park to the east.  Perfect trail to meander down on a bright blue October morning. Might even spot some wild turkeys or a coyote ambling around . . . looking for some wild turkeys.

A Saturday Outing

SLO-4-PUPS, the group that created the first off-leash dog park in the county, hosted The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue K-9 Team for a demonstration at El Chorro Off Leash Dog Park.



The team is an all-volunteer group who train their own dogs for a variety of search work.  In addition to training their dogs, they are also trained as medical first responders,  and trained in navigation, as well as bush craft and wilderness survival skills.  The latter is necessary since the teams are often required to be out in the wilderness and if they need to they must be able to survive for several days on their own.

The dogs can be trained for a variety of uses from man-trailing, to go-find (the dog searches for a person then comes back to alert the handler when found), disaster work (the dog is taught to only scent on living people trapped under rubble, for example, so as not to waste time digging for the dead), and cadaver work (the dog is trained to scent for dead human flesh smell in a variety of places, including on the water where decomposing flesh releases gasses to the surface which the dog detects.)

Dogs’ noses are one of the wonders of the world.  While all dog’s have remarkable scenting abilities, the king of the heap is the bloodhound – all that wrinkled flesh on the face and all sloppy drool in the mouth act as scent molecule traps. The one drawback with bloodhounds is that they can’t be worked off-leash since once they pick up the scent, they’re gone, and few handlers can keep up with them, but for man-trailing on a leash, they are spectacular.

In addition to scenting ability, search and rescue dogs have to have a high drive for the search (Gottafindit! Gottafindit! Gottafindit!), a good amount of endurance, agility and strength to withstand hours of often grueling work, over hill and dale, scrambling over rough terrain. In addition, the dogs have to have a calm and focused temperament which allows them to be in noisy, chaotic environments, like getting into roaring  helicopters with no fear, riding in a variety of noisy vehicles, and be around many stressed out people, all the while remaining focused and ready to get to work.


Which is why German Shepherds and a variety of retrievers are the most popular dogs picked for the work; Good noses, strength and endurance, and a drive for the work. 
Interestingly, with the rise of GPS devices, more people care able to get themselves out of the wilderness, so that work has diminished. Which means that more and more search and rescue work is now focused on finding lost Alzheimer patients, or people suffering from mental impairment problems, or  lost children, all of whom can wander away and need to be found as quickly as possible.

Our local K-9 teams work in concert with other counties all-volunteer teams and together are a great resource.  If you ever get into trouble and need to be found, that snuffling noise you hear in the dark will likely be the happiest sound on earth you’ll ever hear.  Go find!

Everything Including the Kitchen Sink

I have two words for you. Harvest Gold. No, wait, I have five words for you: Forty year-old Harvest Gold. Sink, that is. I know. Bad as that is, it could have been Avocado. But Harvest Gold I’ve lived with for 25 years now and enough is enough.

After saving my shekels forever, buying all the stuff needed, the phone call was made and Kirk Sidner of Estero Plumbing arrived with his tools to buzz-saw through the ceramic trim and lift the old sink out and plunk in a new one. I found some tile trim at Matt Clark’s tile (a place where, when I enter, I think I have died and gone to heaven – gorgeous stuff) and the trim matched closely enough to look like a deliberate design choice.

And so the deed was done just in time to get out the mop: Molly McGillicuddy Malone, the new greyhound, brought with her more than just a smile and a wagging tail. Like the new kid in preschool, she likely came with some gut-bug variant and before you can say, Good Dog, everyone was down with diarrhea – trot city. And time to start the boiled rice, hamburger and Imodium diet. Within a couple of days all but Finn and Zuri were heading back to digestive health. Finn required some assistance with being pilled with Fagyl, while Zuri is bringing up the rear, running a fever and now on doses of antibiotic.

Both Finn and Zuri are always problem patients. Finn because you’ve got one shot at getting medicine into him and if it tastes funny, he’s done with you. You get the stink-eye and his jaws stay firmly clamped shut. And Zuri because Sloughi’s are notorious stoics – likely a survival tactic in a harsh environment. Their foot could be falling off before you’d hear a peep out of them. So you learn to watch them very carefully and in Zuri’s case, yesterday morning when she walked in to say good morning. tail tucked, ears drooping, back hunched, walking stiffly, I knew something was wrong and called Dr. Truax. So, it’s on to some liquid antibiotic which, happily, she doesn’t seem to mind. And now we wait. 24 hours should turn the corner with her.

Poor doggies. Well, Molly likely was the Typhoid Mary of this incident, but dogs often acquire and pass around any number of mutant bugs so if you’re a dog owner, you know the drill well.

Speaking of Dogs

If you have a dog or even if you don’t, come on out to El Chorro Off Leash Dog Park Sunday, 10 – 2 pm. for our 10th Anniversary celebration. There’ll be hot dogs, cake, lots of dogs and about 11 a.m. we’ll be having the dedication ceremony for the new expansion to the large dog area

The expansion was made possible by a generous grant from the late Harold Miossi’s Charitable Trust (The Miossi’s were long time dairy farmers in SLO County; their ranch starts at the base of Highway 101 and Santa Rosa Ave., and Harold was involved for years in the community.)

I’m on the Board of SLO-4-PUPs, the group that started El Chorro Dog Park, the first off-leash dog park in the County. When the dog park first opened ten years ago, a handful of the board members were faced with a whole lot of wood-chip-hurling and mulch spreading and so we were out there often in work parties with other volunteers, working day after day. Early on, I remember being out there hurling mulch when this nice older gentleman showed up with his dog Fred. Without waiting to be asked, he picked up a pitchfork and joined us as we tossed chips for hours.

From that point, I would often see him early in the morning, and as we chatted, I slowly discovered what a remarkable gentleman he was; Berkeley Graduate, County Probate Referee, County Grand Juror, he was also involved in all sorts of environmental and community organizations.

Many years later, I heard Harold had passed on and last year our Board was notified that Harold had loved that park and that grants from his Charitable Trust were available for park improvements. So we applied for a grant and now we have an expanded area, a new doggy pool spa area and lots more room to roam. All thanks to Harold.

So, stop by and take a gander this Sunday. Say Thank You to Harold’s Spirit, who I know is out there hurling mulch or walking up the canyon trail with his dog, Fred. Then have a hot dog. Pet a real dog and come wander around in the most beautiful dog park in the county.

We’ll even have our new SLO-4-PUPs / El Chorro Dog Park embroidered logo baseball hats available in waaay cool grey-green or grey-blue colors, all for a $20 donation.

Sunday Movie Alert

If you’re heading off with a few bucks in your pocket to see Steve Carell’s new movie, “Dinner With Schmucks” because the clips you saw of it on TV or the movie review you read made it look like a laff-a-minute “Dumb & Dumber,” you might want to rethink your plans.

Like so many comedies, the filmmakers seemed to have gone off the mark. Or, perhaps the movie was hijacked right out from under their noses by Steve Carell. The film dragged endlesly through the set-up, had a few chuckles during the final dinner-of-the-title sequence (which, instead of building with unrelentless comic mayhem, remained unfocused, often becalmed and flat, whhich was a singular failure of direction considering the amount of goofy talent that was in the scene), then just dribbled off into the typical boy-helps-boy-get-girl schmaltz.

And I suspect all of that happened because the writers and director thought they were dealing with Jerry Lewis in full crazy-meltdown mode. They weren’t. They were dealing with Inspector Clouseau, who never played a schmuck or a fool or an idiot. Instead, he was deadpan serious, which is what made him so funny.

Ditto Steve Carell’s character in this movie. He’s not a schmuck to be laughed at but a true “innocent” naïf-- Dr. Plangloss with stuffed mice-- who inadvertently causes chaos all around him but who has enough moral sense to constantly try to fix the things he’s ruined, thereby making them again all snowball into a much, much worse state.

While the premise of the film, a remake of a French film, was intended to be cruel (rich amoral Wall-Street types compete to see who can bring the biggest idiots to dinner so they can all laugh at them), Carell hijacked the whole premise by making his character so likeable (hard to hate puppies and small babies who make messes) and so well-intentioned that you didn’t laugh at him so much as laugh at his bumbling, then held your breath, then cheered him on as he attempted to set things right. Plus, as played, he was heroic – a genuinely nice guy in a hard world who still dreams his wonderful dreams and triumphs in the end. (Think of the comic possibilities if Carell had had the courage to make his character so disagreeable that the audience would pray for somebody to toss him out a window. ) Meanwhile the Wall Street Mean Guys were so unfunny they weren’t really even mean. Just annoying.

Thus the mismatch. I think the filmmakers thought they were serving satiric hot chili, which the movie ad boys mistakenly peddled as comic mayhem, while their star Steve Carell switched the menu on them and served up a deliciously sweet piece of pie completely at odds with the stated menu.

Well, that happens when you don’t keep a sharp eye on the cook or the soup.

Heading for L.A.?

Check out www.youtube.com/group/urbanlight  (look for LACMA at night or LACMA light forrest clips) for a gander at Chris Burden’s art installation piece in front of the L.A. County Museum of Art on Wilshire Blvd. The piece is accessible from the street all night long and it’s absolutely beautiful. A giant piece of “sculpture” that invites a childlike interaction with your body within the space. Come dance! Come dance! It’s too cool. And is now on my "to do" list.

Speaking of which  . . .

El Chorro Dog Park (at El Chorro Regional Park off Hwy 1 across from Cuesta College, at the back of the park, past the beautiful new Botanical Gardens) now has a new entryway. Made possible by a donation from Chris Boyle in memory of her Aunt, Lee Boyle, it was constructed by Richard Barrett, R.J. Barrett Construction, with help from dog park volunteers. There’s still some detailing to be done and the dog park sign to be finished, but grab your pooch and come check it out. Like Burden’s “Urban Light” installation, the gateway just feels good to walk through and under.

The dog park will be having its annual fund-raising party Sunday, Oct 3 for the formal ribbon cutting, but meantime, bring your dog out for a visit and a walk though the new gateway.

Finally, here’s Your Sunday Dog Poem

This poem by Karen Shepard from “Doggerel; Poems about Dogs” Everyman’s Library Pocket Poems, Alfred A. Knopf, 2003

BIRCH

You gonna eat that?
You gonna eat that?
You gonna eat that?

I’ll eat that.

Post Time

Ah, finally, the cat’s out of the bag, sort of: story in the Oct 6 New York Times about a lawsuit over a racehorse that “has exposed the fault lines of administering legal drugs to America’s thoroughbreds.”

Seems that I want Revenge, a Kentucky Derby favorite, was scratched from the race with a bad ankle. Happens all the time, you say? Yes, indeed. But the interesting wrinkle here is the testimony of the veterinarians has exposed the typical example of injured horses being doctored up and run again, often without telling the owners or co-owners (in this case) with the horse breaking down later because it’s been run on an injury that may not have had time to heal (time in the barn costs money and scratched races mean loss of more money) and eventually the horse breaks down and there goes bazillions of dollars in winnings, not to mention lost bets. The horse, of course is often lost as well as a jockey or two.

Legal doctoring with steroid injections and other anti-inflammatories plus lax oversight or even a lack of consensus as to what constitutes correct treatment or overuse is the problem. Plus the love of money which too often times comes first over love of the horse. Plus the sad fact that thoroughbreds are unnatural creatures deliberately bred for speed which leads to the unfortunate and deadly consequence that they now have freakishly weak ankles and forelegs legs – in short thoroughbreds are not a horse that would survive without human intervention; too fragile.

And since they’re being used as a method of making money, you know that too many of them will be regularly overused and abused and when they founder, it’s time for the knackerman.

And it isn’t just race horses. If you remember the awful case of the string of Argentine polo ponies that suddenly died at a polo match in Florida. They had been given a specially mixed “tonic” and unfortunately the pharmacy that mixed it apparently got the amount of one of the ingredients reversed and a whole lot of the horses died very quickly. The “tonic” was totally legal, contained no forbidden drugs, and was administered because it allowed the horses to recover more quickly after a chukker so they could get back into the game again. When I first heard about the tragedy (and a devastating tragedy it was for these top riders who bond powerfully with their remarkable horses, many of whom they’ve trained from colt-hood and ridden for years), my first thought was, Why are you giving a “cocktail” to perfectly sound, perfectly conditioned and trained healthy horses? And if you’re giving them this cocktail so they can “recover more quickly” from a totally unnatural activity – chukkers are nothing that exist in nature; horses run away from danger for a short time then stop and rest; they do not run back and forth at high speed, with numerous ankle-wrenching stops and turns-on-a-dime for an exhausting period of time, again and again – then maybe you need to think about what you’re doing to your beloved horses and maybe need to allow a longer natural rest time (sans cocktails) by getting some more ponies as fill-in.

Of course, that would cost more money. So the horses get their cocktails and sometimes something goes wrong and they die. And race horses get their ankles doctored up and run before they’re healed and founder and die. And the money rolls on.

Free Rein, or Dead Hampsters Don't Count

Meanwhile, in the Supreme Court, an interesting “free speech” test case involving what are basically snuff films involving small furry animals being crushed by women in high heels or bare feet sold to sexual fetish sickos, as well as videos being sold (and owned) of a variety of animal snuff films – dog fights, dogs fighting and killing hogs, you name it, all for the stimulation of sickos who get off on that kind of stuff.

One group is arguing that it’s all a matter of free speech. The other group is arguing that animal snuff films have no redeeming value and should be illegal. The court seems to be leaning to the free speech side, which will certainly open the way for even more “creative” animal snuff films because one can never forget the unredeeming power of money and sexual sickos.

Interestingly, possession of child pornography is now an exception to the free speech rule – own that stuff you go to jail even though you did not actually molest a small child, just owned the video or owned or downloaded the pictures of the molesting, while it’s a good bet that owning animal snuff films and photos will be declared perfectly fine. In both cases, sentient beings are being injured and brutalized and abused for the enjoyment of sickos, an activiy that is utterly without redeeming social value, not to mention the socially redeeming issue that there is a powerful connection between animal abusers and human abusers, but in this case, animals don’t count.

Which is ironic because about 100 years ago, there were a few animal cruelty laws on the books but NO child cruelty laws on the books, so an animal cruelty law was used by the good people of New York to shield and save a child – who, it was decided, was an “animal” after all. That case led to a raft of child welfare laws.

Too bad the favor will not be paid back in this case.

Calling All Doggies

Saturday, Oct 10, SLO-4-PUPs will be having our 8th Anniversary celebration and fun/fundraiser for the Off Leash Dog Park at El Chorro Regional Park. (Full disclosure: I’m on the Board of SLO-4-PUPs). The event will run from 10 a.m. to about 2 pm-ish. There’ll be an fun quasi-“agility” course for your dog to run through, a “Not So Serious Dog Show,” with certificates for all participants, lots of chances to win really cool raffle baskets, an official Canine Good Citizens Test (those aren’t available very often so here’s a great chance to have your dog certified), the Department of Animal Services will hold an adopt-a-pet booth (time to adopt a dog), and we’ll have a hot dog BBQ and lots of swell cake!

So, bring your pooch (or come down and adopt a dog) and stop by for some fun.