somerville dog: a weblog

Update 15 January 2007: The name of the person who originally provided the story to the Medford Transcript has been changed in response to threats and harassment. In the interest of consistency, the name of the author of the letter to the editor dated February 24 has also been changed. Also of note: all materials related to this incident have been deleted from the online archives of the Medford Transcript.

The Medford Transcript ran a story on February 10 about an incident that occurred at Sheepfold on January 30. John Smith told reporter Jesse Kawa that his four year old son was bitten by a dog. Smith did not see the incident because he was pulling his son on a sled behind him, and Smith found no bite marks.

Massachusetts State Police Spokeswoman Lt. Sharon Costine said

as the weather begins to improve the state police will be starting up its mounted unit again. She said hopefully, having officers out there will help combat some of these issues and produce a safer environment for everyone that visits the area.

In the same edition the Transcript printed a letter from Smith's wife, Jane: "Dog owners need to leash their pets." Like her husband, Jane Smith did not witness the incident (she had not accompanied him to the Fells with their son).

In fact, the Transcript neglected to interview anyone who witnessed the incident. The witnesses, incidentally, were the people who were enjoying off-leash recreation at Sheepfold that day.

A letter from dog owner and witness, Jill Jones, was printed in the Transcript on February 24 ("Set the record straight: Dog didn't bite child at the Sheep Fold").

According to Jones,

Mr. Smith pulled his 4-year-old son face-down on his sled through a crowd of dogs and their owners. . . .

Maybe Mr. Smith's son doesn't like dogs or was disconcerted by the attention of a few dogs at once, because he whined - not screamed - to his father that he wanted to go home. I was standing very close to this scene and was watching the events unfold and at no time did any dog bite this boy. The boy didn't scream or cry at all.

Mr. Smith . . . . started swearing and hollering and seemed to randomly single out a dog as the supposed culprit (because Mr. Smith had his back to all the dogs that were near his son) and started screaming that this dog had bitten his son.

He asked whose dog it was and a gentleman answered that the dog in question was his. Mr. Smith began shouting, "Your f---ing dog bit my son!"

The owner of the dog calmly stated that his dog did not bite Mr. Smith's son and asked him to calm down. Another man intervened and reminded Mr. Smith that it was a family place because of Mr. Smith's liberal stream of obscenities and because he appeared as though he would become violent at any minute. . . .

Mr. Smith did not examine his son for injuries. He didn't seek medical attention for his son, nor did he use a cell phone to contact the police. . . . What Mr. Smith chose to do . . . . was to sled with his son for about an hour, dogs and all.

In their own editorial on the issue, the Transcript wastes no time calling families who enjoy off-leash recreation at Sheepfold scofflaws. They also concede that Medford

has no specific place where dog owners can go to let their pets run without a leash. This may be a good time to open a discussion about providing some sort of enclosure or open space specifically designated for pet owners, so that everyone can enjoy the great outdoors.

In the February 10 story the Transcript also reports that Rep. Carl Sciortino, D-Somerville, said

it would be great if areas like the Sheep Fold could have various areas designated for dog walking and others for families.

I take issue with the intimation that families with dogs are somehow not families, but the comment is not a direct quote and Sciortino's heart is in the right place. Families do need spaces where dogs are not allowed for activites that do not include dogs; families also need safe and legal spaces for off-leash recreation.

Please take this opportunity to contact your Massachusetts representatives about the need for options that that serve the many and diverse recreational needs of Massachusetts residents in parks like the Middlesex Fells that are managed by the Department of Conservation and Recreation. DCR parks (Dilboy Field, Draw Seven, Foss Park, Mystic River Parkland and Shore Drive Parkland) account for more than sixty-percent of open space in Somerville. It is high time that the State provide options that serve the recreational needs of all Somerville families.

Posted by Michèle at 12:28 AM
Categories: Massachusetts
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Boston.com today is running three photo galleries in the Fashion section under "Your Life" featuring dog fashion. "Pooches primp and hit the runway" starts out benignly enough: the first two slides feature Juneau, an American-Eskimo dog, at Fidough on Charles Street, and Oberon, a Wire-Fox Terrier, and Redwing Indian Wolf, a Collie, from Medford. But the remaining pictures are images from Target's "Doggie Show:" deformed dogs with deformed women (and men) on the other end of the leash.

"Dog Fashion Show" includes a couple of gifts for the dog who has everything, a $500 winter coat made from bobcat fur and a $2,500 necklace by Spanish designer Antonio Menendez. While the necklace is at least something the dog's owner could borrow, a bobcat-fur dog coat does nothing to strengthen the bond between an owner and her dog. For $500, on the other hand, she could buy eighteen weeks of positive training classes at Canine University in Malden.

"Pups as accessories" is basically a photo essay on animal cruelty.

Just as expensive as a Tiffany necklace, teacup and toy dogs have become the new fashion must have.

An expensive Tiffany necklace, however, is still the better-buy: It doesn't have razor sharp teeth, it doesn't have to be house-trained, it doesn't have to be taken out first thing in the morning in the dark, rain, cold..., and it doesn't mind if you only take it out once a year.

Toy and Teacup dogs are, in the apt words or Mark Derr, "mutants maintained to feed human vanity." In Dogs Best Friend: Annals of the Dog-Human Relationship (1997), Derr observes

Like the Pekingese, some are acondroplastic drawfs with bowed and stunted legs, a punched-in face (brachycephalic head) and exaggerated coat. Others, like the Pomeranian, are midgets or ateliotic dwarfs, well-proportioned miniaturized dogs. . . . Nearly all of theses aminals—pugs, Boston terriers, Yorkies, Scotties, toy poodles, miniatureized spaniels, Maltese, Shih tzus, among them—are at the limit of their biological viability, unable to whelp naturally or exist without human intervention. Some are so distorted in temperament and appearance that it is hard to consider them dogs at all . . . . Many are unable to digest their food or relieve themselves properly. For all their problems they remain popular among people who want canine companions but consider real dogs too much bother.

To be fair, since I have become a dog-owner, I have developed an appreciation for small dogs. I was won over by Cassie, a Maltese who is known in the environs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to cavort with dogs many times her size and weight. Yesterday she was fetching a stick that was four times her length!

Derr is an avowed big-dog person, but his irritation is less with small dogs themselves than with breeding practices that produce physiologically unsound animals. Derr is, in fact, quite the fan of "feists" and some hunting terriers that "uphold the honor of small dogs."

Posted by Michèle at 7:58 AM
Categories: Dogs and Culture
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Today is the last day of school vacation week in Massachusetts.

I was speaking with David Renna, Director of Animal Control, yesterday, and learned that he received a complaint on Monday (Presidents Day) from people who had taken their children to play in the snow in a city park. When they got to the park, other families were enjoying off-leash recreation in the park. The people with the children reported that they asked the dog owners to control their dogs, so that they could bring their children into the park, and the dog owners refused to cooperate.

When schools are closed, the ordinary schedule of park usage is affected. Whereas, on an ordinary week day, parks may be otherwise deserted during the day except for off-leash recreation, during school vacation children may be playing in city parks at all hours during the day.

The unfortunate fact for families with dogs in Somerville is that, currently, off-leash recreation is not permitted in city parks. When Somerville establishes safe and legal off-leash recreational areas, we will have places where we can enjoy off-leash recreation without competing with other park uses.

Until then: Beware of children playing!

Posted by Michèle at 7:32 AM
Categories: Canine Good Citizenship, Somerville
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An article in The Boston Globe on February 6 explains how a group of concerned dog-owners in Allston are improving the quality of life of all residents:

Normally, crime watches in Boston (there are more than 1,000) focus on a block or two, but the Ringer Park dogs and dog-lovers bit off a little bit more: not just the park itself, which includes a playground, a ball field, and a small corner of urban wild at its southern end, but also several residential blocks around it. This widening of scope was vital, says [co-organizer Jonathan] Ralton, because the park has often been used as a launching point or getaway route for break-ins and vandalism and because disturbances in the park have an adverse affect on the quality of life of its neighbors.

More information:

Ringer Park Crime Watch Group

Ringer Playground Dog Park Group

via BostonDogs

Posted by Michèle at 12:03 PM
Categories: Massachusetts
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Apologies, gentle reader, for the redundancy at the somervilledog.com domain, but, because the Somerville Dog Owners Group website is relatively new, I'm cross-posting the announcement about the som|dog meeting this week:

Somerville Dog Owners Meeting
Nathan Tufts Field House
Powder House Park
Broadway
6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.

Please make other arrangements for your canine companions; dogs are not allowed in the Field House.

Additional information (from the som|dog website)

Posted by Michèle at 8:51 AM
Categories:
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The som|dog website is now "live," and I have moved some information from this weblog to that site. For example, the link to the local weather forecast from Weather Underground is now on the som|dog information page. The links to other dog owner groups as well as the links to websites providing information about starting a dog park are now in the bibliography, located under som|dog resources. I have also moved the link to the Somerville Dog Owners Group message board to the som|dog homepage.

The som|dog logo on the blog homepage links to the som|dog website.

Soon I will be adding information about past (and upcoming) som|dog meetings to the som|dog events page. You can still find the agendas and summaries of past meetings on the message board.

Speaking of som|dog meetings, the first som|dog meeting of 2005 will be rescheduled soon. The meeting previously scheduled for January 24, 2005 was postponed due to a snow emergency. I had been waiting to reschedule the meeting until the Green Line meeting was reschduled. The Green Line meeting has been rescheduled for to Monday, February 28, 2005 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Somerville High School.

Posted by Michèle at 11:32 AM
Categories: D.O.G.s (Dog Owner Groups), Somerville, website news
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My intent was always to have a place to work that was the right mix of corporate and artistic—part of creating that environment is to wear suits and have dogs.

The dog-friendly corporate philosophy of Roger Sametz, president and founder of Boston branding firm Sametz Blackstone Associates, is not just about dogs: it's about a better workplace for people. Sametz Blackstone Associates was featured in an article on December 12, 2004 in the Boston Globe, "Some companies help to lick stress by allowing dogs at work" (via Boston Pooch*). According to the article

a survey conducted by the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association in 2001 found that having pets in the office created a more productive work environment among 73 percent of the participating companies. The association's survey, which included workplaces with dogs, cats, fish, small animals, reptiles, and birds, showed a reduction in absenteeism of 27 percent among employees.

Another study conducted at the State University of New York at Buffalo and published in 2001 found that "control of borderline hypertension [high blood pressure] can be assisted by a behavioral intervention involving a pet dog."

Now, if having a pet dog in your home can help to lower your blood pressure, and if allowing pets in the workplace can improve employee morale, reduce absenteeism and help to make employees more willing to stay late, it stands to reason that allowing residents to enjoy municipal parks with their pets will also reduce tension, for example the tension in neighborhoods between people who want to enjoy parks with our dogs and people who want to enjoy dog-free parks.

It just so happens that it was precisely the dog-friendly Sametz Blackstone Associates who researched and installed the multi-colored educational signs at Somerville's "story park," Conway Park. As a Globe article put it last year, the City hired the corporate branding firm "to boost its self-respect and attract outsiders." An article in the Somerville Journal emphasized that

the park and story signs were created to be accessible to kids. It has been tailored so that children can take field trips to the park and learn about the history. However, there is something there for everyone, from sports, to industry and gardening.

Correction: there is something at Conway Park for everyone except families with dogs.

Somerville parks accommodate residents who enjoy playing sports—both in organized leagues and in casual games among family and friends, but not residents who enjoy playing with our dogs. Somerville parks accommodate residents who enjoy bicycling, walking, in-line skating and running, but not residents who enjoy walking with our dogs. Somerville parks accommodate residents who enjoy simply spending time outdoors—gardening, reading, socializing, etc., but not residents who enjoy spending time outdoors with our dogs. Somerville parks accommodate families with young children, but families must leave our dogs home while we enjoy Somerville's parks.

A dog-friendly policy for Somerville's open spaces is not about dedicating parks to dogs, it's about creatively managing the City's open spaces in a way that accomodates the diverse needs of Somerville families. "The right mix" of recreational opportunities is exactly what Somerville needs.

*UPDATE 22 February 2006: The BostonPooch site is, alas, defunct.

Posted by Michèle at 12:36 PM
Categories: Dogs and Business, Somerville, Your Health
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