The Feast of Saint Rocky

Today is the Feast day of Saint Rock or, as he is familiarly known, Saint Rocky. Saint Rocky is the Patron Saint of Dog Lovers, having been kept alive in the wilderness when he was sick by a dog who brought him bread every day from his master's table.

St. Rocky got sick tending the plague-stricken and though the plague did not kill him, thanks to Fido the Faithful, it made him so unrecognizable that when he arrived home in Montpellier, he was thrown in jail as an impostor. When he died, his jailers found a birthmark that proved his identity. Why they did not think to look for the birthmark while he was alive remains a mystery.

It is hard to imagine a dog being caught so long by a case of mistaken identity. Smell is not so deceptive, I think, as sight. Sure, diet and health can change the overtones, but out genetic code gives us our basic smell. Even humans with their comparitive dearth of olfactory information processing, it turns out, can read genes by sniffing. Co-eds in a college experiment got to smell men's t-shirts, and chose as smelling "sexy" the shirts worn by guys whose genetic profile meant an immune system that complemented their own, and as "dull" the shirts of guys whose were the most genetically similar. "He smells like my brother" was a comment that was genetically accurate. The nose knows more than we think.

Laws of Human Behavior

Hugo Martin wrote about dogs off leash in the LA Times and, like many such articles, painted a sensible, well-written, wrong-headed picture that completely missed the point about people and dogs in public spaces. Nowadays, people do not love their dogs as they love their cars or even homes. The behavior of humans with their possessions is receptive to collective rule making and responsive to group pressure on behavior.

Nowadays, people love their dogs as they love their children. A dog becomes an ally who can be depended on in a very messy and confusing world. Dog people break the law because they experience a bond being in nature with their dog that their moral center tells them must be good and all the park rangers and dog experts in the world will not convince them otherwise. Seemingly wise pronouncements on rules for training to some sound like so much "spare the rod and spoil the child" dogmatism to such people and they will ignore it. Laws that groups of people agree are unjust simply will not be followed, and strict enforcement only will raise anger on both sides.

Thirty-nine percent of homes in America have dogs People need activities where they can enjoy the company of their dogs as equal companions, and that means no leash. A dog off-leash is a different creature than a dog on a leash. Fenced off-leash parks are okay, but only the dogs get exercise. For the humans, it feels like a daily visit to the prison yard. Runyon Canyon is the only local off-leash hiking area where both and it is overburdened in the extreme. Huntington Beach is another, but it is a long haul. Not something that can be done every day. The only solution is to have many, many more places such as these. Enough areas for people to hike and play alongside their dogs in the mountains and beaches, so that the scofflaws can both serve the demands of their hearts and obey the law.

Room needs to be made for everyone at the table, yet more room is made for people and their off-road bikes and dune buggies than is made for people and their dogs. Does this seem right or fair. Do dogs do more damage than dirt bikes?

We need to figure out how to integrate dogs more safely rather than figure out how the scofflaws are wrong. When such a large segment of the otherwise law-abiding population tosses all respect for a law aside, that usually indicates an obsolescent worldview that requires revisting by the community as a whole if the community truly wishes to solve the issue.