Anybody out there? Good. Go to this meeting. Please?

If you're reading this, God bless you. I sorta stopped updating this because several political campaigns consumed all my free time. Also, I'm terribly burned out on this issue. Despite the work of many, many people, it doesn't look like the end-result includes more than an inch or two of ground. It's clear that Parks values other park activities (sports and playscapes) above all others and there was never an intention to find a reasonable plan for shared usage. But, the work of the committee will be presented for feedback and it'd be, like, cool if you could go and comment on it. If you miss the one for your area, don't hesitate to go to one of the other meetings to give them a piece of your mind (meeting details below).

And, hey, I'm sort of collecting names and email addresses of folks who want to work together for when this is presented to our new city council. If you want, send me a note at pdxdogblog@yahoo.com. Or send me a note to say hi, but no thanks.


A citizen Off-Leash Advisory Committee has spent the past year working with PP&R to evaluate the current program and recommend ways in which it can be improved. Their draft recommendations will be presented for review and comment at three public meetings scheduled in mid-November. While information about all 33 off-leash parks will be available at the meetings, each meeting will have a particular geographic focus. Participants will have the opportunity to evaluate detailed information about the parks of greatest interest to them.

Saturday, November 20, 9:30-11:30am
Mt. Scott Community Center, 5530 SE 72 Ave.
Focus: Southeast and Outer East Park Locations

Saturday, November 20, 1:30-3:30pm
University of Portland, Buckley Center, 5000 N. Willamette Blvd.
Focus: North and Northeast Park Locations

Monday, November 22, 5:30-7:30pm
Multnomah Art Center, 7688 SW Capitol Highway
Focus: Northwest and Southwest Park Locations

The Times They Are A Changin'

In case you didn't already know....Sunrise Wednesday is at 7:07 and sunset is at 6:54. So, if your "shared" park is near a school, you have exactly 53 minutes in which to exercise with your dog. Probably want to do the full 53 minutes, because that's all you're going to get. You're pooch won't get any evening time. So please, PLEASE don't oversleep!
Oh, and on Thursday? Two minutes less.

Picking up Poop in Seattle

I've long believed that this whole issue really boils down to scooping poop. Everyone has at least one vivid memory of stepping in some, and it's a not-too-pleasant memory, either. And it's very tempting to spot it on the ground and want to attribute it to the first dog you see. It wasn't until I read an story in the Austin American-Statesman that I discovered that Seattle requires owners to carry visible poop-scooping bags. I think it's a fine idea.

In Seattle, for example, dog owners in city parks must visibly carry scooping equipment and can be ticketed $50 for not having it. And people do get ticketed, said Dewey Potter, communications manager for the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department.

More Dark Days

The rains have returned to Portland. In a city of people who love parks, you'd never know it this time of year. Playscapes (all 110 of which are inspected daily by Parks) are wet and unused. Soccer and baseball fields are soggy at best, mudpits at worse. No matter where you are, your neighborhood park will continue to be, er, underutilized for the next 6 months (or more!), save for the occasional non-rainy day. But there is a sizable group of users who will be doggedly continue to be at parks, rain or shine. In many parks, dogs and their owners are often the only park visitors on dark, rainy days. (And if it wasn't enough fun to get out in the rain and mud twice a day, many Portlanders will have the added joy of driving back and forth to parks with their wet and muddy pets because the empty park down the street is not available.)

So, given these conditions and the fact that off-leash hours don't actually start until 30 minutes after dark, surely Parks will correct their mistakes and at least move the evening hours to a time that's actually before dark? No. Several dog owners endured a boring OLAC meeting on Tuesday for a chance to politely plead to fix this policy oversight. Said one: "who do I need to talk to to get this changed, because it needs to be changed right away, like tomorrow." Parks told them in no uncertain terms that neither this, nor anything else would be changed until the "test" period is over, which won't be until next year at the earliest. Wait a minute. We've been told repeatedly that this was a 1-year trial. We're already 14 months into this one-year trial and now we're informed that no matter how boneheaded it is, it'll continue for another 4 months?

For dog owners, Parks has no sympathy.

Reminder: Meeting Tonight

Please come to the Off-Leash Advisory Committee meeting tonight at 5:30. It's a chance to speak up about your park usage to the citizen's board that will make recommendations to the Council about what to do going forward.

They Ruin the Ballfields!

One reason mentioned for excluding dogs from parks is damage done to the fields... It's true that there are a few areas used by dogs where the turf is getting a little thin this time of year. Since dogs are now forced to congregate in dense numbers, this is not surprising.

The same is true of every sports field in the city as soccer players and softball games have pounded and scraped sections of fields. But in Chapter 12 of "Do as we say, not as we do", the same Parks Bureau that wants a light footprint by dog users, feels free to make daily use of heavy trucks driven willy-nilly through the parks, including the sacred sports fields, because park employees apparently can't use a wagon or some other low-impact method to carry trash from cans to their truck.

The Parks Bureau will spend a lot of money and time in the off-season revitalizing these fields: aerating, seeding, mowing, and yes, smoothing out ruts caused by sports users and Parks' trucks. But when was the last time you heard the suggestion that fields shouldn't be used by softball teams because they might be damaged by them?

If the Parks Bureau can determine that the labor hours saved in using heavy vehicles to retrieve bags of trash offsets the cost of the damage done by the trucks, then I'll take their word for it, but why are dog owners the only users held to the highest standard?

Here are some recent pictures (taken at 8:10 last Thursday morning) from Sewallcrest park.

And at another park a few weeks back.

Don't Cross This Imaginary Line

If the City passed a law that said you can only walk on your right foot or else pay a large fine, how many people do you think would follow it? To me, the leash laws are a lot like that. Yet surprisingly, most people are willing to obey even unreasonable laws. You have to click on the photo below to see the large version...notice the cluster of dog owners at Sewellcrest Park on last Thursday morning at 7:50 a.m. The field is entirely empty save for a few crows, yet the dog owners (it looks like they're in jail) are all in their small allotted space. This is a typical scene during "dog hours" ... the only people using the park are there with their dog(s). I see it a lot and it's both humorous and sad at the same time. This demonstrates how arbitrary the time and space requirements are. I'm all for giving preference to human sports teams and human picnickers, but why do we have to give preference to crows?? More importantly, it shows that if a set of reasonable regulations were actually presented (No dogs in play scape areas, groomed ballfields; pick up after pets, etc.), we could expect dog owners to follow them.

Willamette Park Meat Was Laced

If you haven't heard already, it was announced today that lab tests confirmed that the meat (including nine whole chickens) left in Willamette Park was laced. Strangely, the meat contained high levels of caffeine (which can be poisonous to dogs and cats in high dosage).

As times goes on, it's becoming clearer and clearer that the small number of folks who are anti-dog are tightly clustered on the wack-o end of the spectrum of opinion.

OLAC Meeting on Tuesday, September 14

The next meeting of the Off-Leash Advisory Committee will be on Tuesday, Sept. 14 in the Portland Building at 5:30. There will be a chance for public input (2 minutes per person). The topics for discussion include reviewing the natural areas study and the survey results. Please come.

(The Portland building is at 1120 SW Fifth.)

"I've gained 10 pounds in the last 3 months."

That's a comment I overheard at a park last night. The lady who made the quote was referring to the fact that because she can no longer use any of the 3 parks within walking distance of her house, she has had to drive to a park twice a day. Like many dog owners, she actually uses parks for exercise, and that includes the process of getting there and back. Isn't that a primary use of parks...exercise? This has got to be the first time in years that the City has developed a program that actually encourages Portlanders to drive more. Mayor Katz, why would you encourage driving when you pride yourself on getting around by foot in this "walkable city"?

Sunset today is at 7:44 P.M.

Tonight's sunset is at 7:44 P.M., yet off-leash hours don't start until 8 P.M. Boy how the City has bent over backwards to share a common resource. If you don't like exercising in a dark park, I guess you're just ungrateful.

All this generosity despite the fact that most parks are demonstrably almost empty all day long this time of year..."shared" parks and non-shared parks alike.

I've been told that hours at Irving Park have been extended to start at 6 p.m. instead of 8 p.m. This whole mess started when a small number of people complained loudly and often. It's pretty obvious what it will take to get usage of our parks back...

Park Fun Facts

Sorry, I've been busy with a number of things and haven't had time to post, so I'll just post some basic facts and you can interpret them anyway you want. The parks data comes from the Portland Parks website.

City of Portland Parks
Acres of land managed: 10000
Acres of park managed: 8738.8
Acres of city golfcourses: 794.4
Acres of full-time off-leash: 33.137

Number of full-time playscapes: 110
Number of full-time off-leash areas: 6
Percentage of Portland households with children under age 18*: 27
Percentage of Portland households with a dog: 40+
Number of daily playscape inspections: 110

Number of tennis courts: 119
Number of softball fields: 99
Number of soccer/football fields: 80
Number of horseshoe pits: 20
Number of time-limited OL areas: 27

Estimated amount of money spent in first year on leash and scoop enforcement: $100,000.00
Number of people doing the enforcement: 20
Number of man-hours spent enforcing scoop and leash laws per month: 3400
Total scoop law citations written in last 12 months: 3

Estimate number of dog visits to neighborhood parks in a year**: 2,427,250
Number of "bite investigations" in parks for 12 months: 25
Number of "bite investigations" per dog visit: .00107% or 1 in 93,356
Number of crime victims in the City of Portland in 2003**: 46,391
Odds of being a crime victim in the City of Portland in 2003: 8.6% or 1 in 11.6

* 2000 census, though this number has been declining for many years.
**Conservative, back-of-the envelope estimate assuming an average of 50 daily dog visits to each of the 132 neighborhood parks plus Forest Park (25+ undeveloped parks omitted, walkways and other public areas (such as the Esplanade and Tom McCall Waterfront Park) and natural areas also omitted. For most parks, the number of visits are much, much greater.
***From City website and assuming a population of 539,438.

No Chickens Here...

C-SPOT is sponsoring a Take Back Our Park Rally at Willamette Park this Saturday the 28th at 1 pm. Show up with your dog(s)...on leash of course. For more information, contact C-SPOT at 503-230-8131 or go to www.cspotpdx.com.

Still no word on the lab tests from the raw meat...

Last Images for Now

More pictures. I actually hoped that on at least one of the pictures there would be a field full of soccer players or a playground teaming with kids. But there wasn't, and it's clear to me there won't be. Plus, with the rain, there is even less demand for the open spaces. That shouldn't be a DQ automatically, as dog owner's know that we use the parks rain or shine. Can't say that for baseball players. In fact, one famous story is of a gentleman ticketed for having a dog off-leash in a downpour in Wilshire Park a few months ago. Absolutely no one else cared to be in the park that day (nor did he, I'm sure) but he got a ticket nonetheless. So here are the last pictures for a while.

Bonus park is Wilshire. Picture taken Monday, Aug. 23 at 4 p.m.

City Endorses Actions of Dog Poisoner

Look at the picture on this KATU news story. The sad truth in Portland is that when dogs are threatened in this town, the City does exactly what the creep who did the threat wanted. If you're angry about this too, plan to attend the next meeting of the Off-Leash Advisory Committee on Tuesday, September 14 on the 2nd floor of the Portland Building downtown. Meeting starts at 5:30 p.m. and there will be an opportunity for the public to speak.