I didn't plan on writing about toxic dog parks today. No, the plan was to work yesterday on Polly Higgins'report on the Good COP, Bad COP conference. Instead, I spent most of my day at the local pet emergency hospital with my 10 year-old rescue mutt Stella. Stella became ill soon after midnight Sunday morning, and by 10 am was literally shitting what looked like a gallon of blood. Two hundred and eighty dollars and eight hours later, I took her home. Turns out she had developed Hemorrhagic Gastroenteritis (HGE), a potentially fatal condition. Something she had eaten had torn apart her digestive system. Severe dehydration could have resulted in shock and death within a matter of hours.
And the horrible thing? I know Stella ate what made her sick at our local dog park. Which is built over a landfill. After every major rain storm, something leeches to the surface which dogs just love to eat. I was talking with a friend when I noticed her nose buried in the mud. And something in that mud almost killed her ... EcoJustice for dogs? You better believe it, sistah!
Stella with her ball at Stinson Beach, 2008.
It has been twenty-five years since the Ohlone Dog Park in Berkeley, California, became the first dog park to open in the United States. Since then, the bark park has experienced an unprecedented movement from a fringe idea to a staple of park and recreation systems. Though
an exact count of dog parks evades researchers, the number is commonly estimated to be over seven hundred (dogpark.com). As Craig Foreman, manager of park planning and development for the city of Fort Collins, Colorado, puts it, "It used to be, "A park‟s gotta have ball fields."Now it"s, "You gotta have a dog park" (Krohe, 2005 p 27).
It's been a little over two years now since I packed my bags and headed over the hill from the bliss of living right upside the beaches of both Bolinas and Stinson. Over the hill from paradise, packing light in anticipation of a new life, with the exception of 70 pounds worth of Stella, my bird-chasing, ball-fetching, body-surfing bundle of neurotic, seperation-anxiety-ridden canine fiasco. I always called her the worst dog I ever had, until yesterday, but oh, there have been times, when I watched her in flow ... back and forth, back and forth into the surf through endless sessions of fetch; watching, lost in the timeless wake behind her as she swam towards her ball in the creek just outside Olema, when we communicated seamlessly. Connecting across space, time and species.
Living on this side of the hill, the 'civilized side', I've become an habitual dog park person, and since rescuing 14-year-old Macaroni a little over a year ago, outings to the local dog parks are just part and parcel of our days.
But in the few hours I've had to research today, I've discovered that a majority of dog parks in the US are built over landfills. And although landfills, are covered with liners, the liners are only good for some five odd years and are notorious for leeching, particularly during storms. In fact, recent studies have determined that a 10-acre landfill can leak between 0.2 and 10 gallons per day. Some scary shit, huh? One of our usual haunts is built over a landfill.
The other, the Mill Valley Dog Park is situated alongside a tributary of the Richardson Bay. At high tide, dogs regularly splash, swim and romp in the water. Back in 2008, it was almost 24 hours before residents were informed that 2.7 million gallons of treated and raw sewage had spilled into the bay.
The stinking flow of effluent poured out of the Sewerage Agency of Southern Marin plant in Mill Valley between 5:30 and 8:30 p.m. Thursday and eventually flowed into the eastern arm of Richardson Bay, a sensitive tidal marsh with currents that can carry pollutants past Sausalito and Tiburon into San Francisco Bay.The amount of spilled sewage would cover a football field - including the end zones - 6.3 feet deep, enough to endanger wildlife, dogs and any people who entered the water.Signs were posted along Marin County shoreline and at San Francisco beaches - including Crissy Field, Baker Beach, China Beach and Aquatic Park - to discourage people from entering the water.State regulators were notified about the spill before midnight Thursday, but local officials, environmentalists and regular users of the bay were not told in some cases until 20 hours later."We're asking why there was such a delay," said Marin County sheriff's Lt. Doug Pittman, the spokesman for the county Office of Emergency Services, who said the county wasn't notified until around 9:30 a.m. Friday."Coming on the coattails of the Cosco Busan (oil spill) response, any delay is something we are concerned about," he said. "In the next few days, we will be trying to find out why there was such an untimely delay."The warning signs at local beaches were put up as a precaution, although not until Friday afternoon - long after many residents had finished their morning swim in the chilly bay. Water quality experts won't know until tests come back Saturday how much pollution is still swirling around.
"It's a significant problem," said Sejal Choksi, the program director for the environmental group Baykeeper. Her organization found out about the spill by reading about it on The Chronicle's Web site Friday afternoon. "The fact that you've got over 2 million gallons of sewage in the bay means that the aquatic environment has been totally slammed with bacteria, pathogens and industrial chemicals that it shouldn't be exposed to." link
Now, I'm not pointing any fingers here at my local officials really ... just spreading some information about dog park safety issues. Feel I have the right and obligation to do so, after what happened to Stella after a visit to one of these parks Saturday afternoon.
Hemorrhagic Gastroenteritis (HGE)
HGE is an inflammation (infection) of the stomach and small intestine, characterized by a sudden onset of vomiting and diarrhea. Often both the diarrhea and vomiting are bloody. The diarrhea is frequently described as looking like raspberry jam. Dogs initially appear bright and alert but become very depressed and lethargic as symptoms continue. Damage to the lining of the stomach and intestines can make the dog susceptible to infection. Early treatment of HGE is important so that dehydration and other symptoms can be resolved before they become life threatening. The disease is considered and emergency, as it can progress to profound shock and death in a matter of hours.
Causes
The causes of HGE are unknown, but bacterial toxins, viruses and abnormal immune response may be potential factors. Link
Dogparks & Landfills: A few samplings
Ocean Ave Dogpark: Be careful of holes and the quarry pits as well as the water. This was an old landfill so any water up here may not be clean for swimming.
Sacramento, California, May 21, 2009—Councilmember Steve Cohn invites residents andthe media to attend the Grand Opening of Sutter’s Landing Regional Park – Dog Park. Once the site of a landfill, part of the site has now been transformed into a spacious 3-acre dog park with separate areas for large and small dogs.
SouthBay Pets ... Time to catch up on that ongoing effort by Bruce and Maureen Megowan to establish an off-leash dog park on the former Palos Verdes landfill site between Hawthorne and Crenshaw boulevards, north of Palos Verdes Drive North.
Dog park to rise on old landfill: Hawks Prairie: Washington ... Commissioners shut down South 40 in 2000 after residents complained about odors and gulls that deposited their droppings everywhere. A lawsuit over those claims was settled for $8.5 million two years later.
Stella and step-brother Trey, Stinson Beach, 2008.
More about dogparks ...
1.Sharing of water at dogs parks is spreading disease between dogs in the parks
- urine-soaked wood chips cause parasites and diarrhea,
- Dogs who eat infected soil become ill from Coccidia and Giardia, single-celled parasites that damage the lining of the intestine
- "Suddenly after the dog park he was laying on his side with shaking limbs and wouldn't move much. I kept a watch on him - he soon threw-up and started having bloody diarrhea so we just took him in and he has HGE."
Stella's older brother, Macaroni, 14, waited and worried by my side in the waiting room yesterday for hours. The reuniting of the siblings brought tears to the eyes of everyone.
Research: All that shit concentrated in one small space ...
Since Dogs Do What They Do, What Can We Do to Improve the Doo-doo Situation at Dog Parks? by Dillon Sussman (2008)
Ironically, dog parks—which resulted from leash laws intended, in part, to reduce the negative effects of dog waste—may in fact amplify the aesthetic, sanitary and environmental problems caused by dog waste by concentrating it in smaller areas.
(snip)
Although user organized waste removal has largely eliminated the sight and smell of dog waste, it has not deal with the environmental impacts of the waste. It simply pushes the problem to the landfill. The quantity of pet waste entering landfills is unknown, but San Francisco recently determined that pet waste accounted for nearly four percent of their residential waste stream (Jones, 2006). Nationwide, it is estimated that 10 million tons of dog and cat waste are generated each year (Lovgren, 2006). One can only guess how much of that ends up in the landfills, but dog parks, which often have pooper-scooper rules are only increasing the proportion. The environmental effects of trucking all that waste are compounded by the standard poop-scoop procedure. Typically, dog waste is picked up in plastic bags (often recycled grocery bags) that are tied shut and put into plastic garbage bags that are then taken to the landfill. The plastic bags do not decompose for decades and so the dog feces, which would readily decompose, are effectively mummified—occupying valuable landfill space. Even if biodegradable bags are used to deliver dog feces to landfills, the waste will often be compacted and buried under other garbage. Under the resulting anaerobic conditions, dog waste decomposition produces methane, a greenhouse gas that is much more potent than carbon dioxide. Many dog owners are no happier about the long-term effects of dumping dog waste than landfill managers who are desperate for space. Robert Picciotto, a San Francisco dog walker described the dilemma: "It bugs me that I‟m sending a plastic-wrapped time capsule of my dog‟s stool samples to the landfill every day" (Jones, 2006). Sussman 2008 Dopgarks.pdf
Stella's baby sister, Koda, (at 7 last weeks last winter), who waited with my daughter in Denver.
Which all leads me to the ultimate question? What value a life? Be it human, animal, vegetable, Corporate?
I happened to flick on MSNBC last Friday afternoon before heading out to teach my 3:30 computer class. A team of firefighters were engaged in an extraordinary rescue effort of a German Shepherd trapped in a storm swollen Los Angeles river. The commentators began discussing at what point would they give up, calculating that the resources they were expending on this rescue just didn't add up in terms of cost/benefit analysis. So what were they going to do? Pull the news chopper away so viewers didn't have to watch as the team abandoned the animal or let us observe the animal as it was pulled to a certain death by the rapid tides.
They opted to save the dog.
Somehow this all fits together for me. The past 13 days of lives lost and lives saved during the still unfolding, forever unfolding horror which hovers over Haiti; the calculated decisions, during those first precious days, about which planes could land and which would be diverted, which lives were saved and which were deemed acceptable losses, and my sweet dog Stella, who owes her life to the fact that I had made the wrong decision, had let deadlines and appointments take precedence over two other dogs in my life, both of whom died because I was too late, too preoccupied to diagnose the severity of their conditions.
Stella's baby sister Koda, 10 months. Summer 2009, Stinson Beach.
Yesterday, I was fortunate to still have enough money on my credit card. But is life really about money? Would they have turned me away if I was destitute? Would they have let my dog hemmorage to death in the waiting room? Slip into apocaleptic shock in front of Macaroni and I and all the other grieving animal lovers awaiting the fate of their loved pets? I think not.
I believe that life is just about love. A love of life, in whatever form it exists. In whatever state (or stage) of disarray, chaos, disaster: The love of a few pooch possessed LA firemen; of volunteer doctors and nurses and aid workers and permaculturists and architects who specialize in bamboo-earthquake resistant buildings, all flooding onto an island desperate with the need to help; of family members, parched with thirst, digging with dust-covered broken and bloody yet hopeful bare hands through layers and layers of concrete and rubble for days and days and days in response to an elusive echo, a tapping.
Who can put a price on the thing you love? A time? A quantity?
Stella at Baker Beach, San Francisco, 2009.
And so, to Stella, Stella, Starlight and to all of you who know love, a dedication:
"Somewhere my flower is there"
"I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman. He has never smelled a flower. He has never looked at a star. He has never loved any one. He has never done anything in his life but add up figures. And all day he says over and over, just like you: 'I am busy with matters of consequence!' And that makes him swell up with pride. But he is not a man--he is a mushroom!"
"A what?"
"A mushroom!"
The little prince was now white with rage.
"The flowers have been growing thorns for millions of years. For millions of years the sheep have been eating them just the same. And is it not a matter of consequence to try to understand why the flowers go to so much trouble to grow thorns which are never of any use to them? Is the warfare between the sheep and the flowers not important? Is this not of more consequence than a fat red-faced gentleman's sums? And if I know--I, myself--one flower which is unique in the world, which grows nowhere but on my planet, but which one little sheep can destroy in a single bite some morning, without even noticing what he is doing--Oh! You think that is not important!"
His face turned from white to red as he continued:
"If some one loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows in all the millions and millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars. He can say to himself, 'Somewhere, my flower is there . . .' But if the sheep eats the flower, in one moment all his stars will be darkened . . . And you think that is not important!" from Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry'
Photocredits:
Intro: dog park-night by vizmo
Stella, Macaroni, Trey, & Koda by Lizzy Phelan
EcoJustice series discuss environmental justice, or the disproportionate impacts on human health and environmental effects on minority communities in the U.S. and around the world. All people have a human right to clean, healthy and sustainable communities.
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