A Dog’s Life
By David Weinstein
I was going to start this week’s column on dog parks with the catchy quotation – “The true measure of a city is how it treats the least among us.” In this case, “the least among us” referring to our dogs. Then I got to thinking seriously about how we treat our dogs and changed my mind. They are no longer the least among us. In fact, I dare to mention what I feed my dog in the event a local restaurateur is reading this and gets an idea because the food prices in Laguna are already too expensive. And I am working decidedly hard to become a better person so in case there is reincarnation, I can come back as a dog in a wealthy census tract area. Indeed, if you want to get a good sense of a community, go visit its dog park.
Dog parks are a recent phenomenon. The first report of a dog park was in Berkeley in 1979. Based on what I remember before this, we pretty much let dogs (and our kids) run free. I know this from many unfortunate incidents playing football at the schoolyard. The game would often have to be suspended because someone would inadvertently get tackled into a pile of dog poop. The stuff was everywhere, scattered across the playing fields of our childhood like land mines. I’m guessing our parents, the “Greatest Generation,” who suffered through the Depression and World War II, thought this was character building and a good life lesson to always be vigilant. As a kid, it was just humiliating and taught me how mean friends could be and that I didn’t want to ever be the subject of ridicule. So now we have designated safe places for our dogs to exercise and roam freely, and free bag dispensers placed strategically so one can pick up their dog’s poop.
I am somewhat of an expert on dog parks in our area. This is because our dog Tucker, a Lagotto Romagnolo, runs our house, and he demands to be taken “out” every day at 9:30 a.m. and then again at 3 p.m. It’s as if he has a built-in timer. This was not the original plan. He was to be our faithful companion. However, despite spending more money on his training than my dignity allows me to divulge, no one told us that we needed to be trained too. The trainer trained our dog and then the dog trained us.
So, it’s off to the dog park every day. The closest is in Newport Beach adjacent to the Civic Center sculptural gardens and the sleek, uber modern surrounding buildings. It is a monument to minimalism, and efficiency with its artificial grass, concrete walkways, and decomposed granite play areas. But it is also tough on the pads of my dog’s feet, so we change up frequently. On alternate days, we go to the Laguna Dog Park up the Canyon, and sometimes to the Costa Mesa Dog Park next to the Orange County Fairgrounds. By far, his favorite is the Laguna Dog Park. At Newport, the space is constrained, and the owners are often too busy conducting business or chatting on their cell phones to notice that their dog has fallen in love with your leg and can’t help expressing itself. At Costa Mesa, there is lots of room for a dog to run, but its popularity and proximity ensures that it is well used, and it’s hard to keep the sprinklers from turning the bare spots into mud. But the Laguna Dog Park is great. Wide open, with places to run on the flats and up the hillsides, a bucolic setting, and generally polite dog owners.
In my opinion, the City got this one right. Maybe they ought to consider a new slogan – “Visit Laguna Beach. We’ll treat you like a dog.”
David Weinstein lives in Newport Beach with Ann and their dog Tucker.
