February 22, 2005
san francisco dog court
I love dogs and I love Law & Order, so I really loved Luke O'Brien's recent piece for SF Weekly about San Francisco Dog Court, written L&O-style with the responsibilities of law (Police Officer John Denny and Capt Vicky Guldbech of Animal Care and Control, who enforce the regulations) and order (Sgt Bill Herndon, who presides over Dog Court and decides what to do with the animals and their owners) clearly delineated and explained. Here's an explanation of what Dog Court is all about:
Yeah, it can get wacky in here, and at first glance, that's what Dog Court looks like -- a wacky legal outgrowth on the far liberal end of the political spectrum, where San Francisco's natural absurdities congregate. But the court is decidedly prosaic in its purpose: to safeguard the community and to protect a person from the seizure of property -- a dog -- without due process. Over the last decade, the laws of Dog Court have been tweaked, but only to give the hearing officer more flexibility in his rulings. The court remains an institution that aims to safeguard individual rights and dispense individual blame. Herndon's idea of justice coincides with this aim. Whenever possible, he hammers home the point that the court is less about dogs than people. "It's about re-educating the person," he says. "It's about individual responsibility."
But Dog Court is also, of course, about the animals, and it reflects a fundamental ideological shift in how San Franciscans, in general, have come to look at their pets. Under the law, San Franciscans who keep dogs are no longer just dog owners. They're guardians. San Franciscans no longer take a bad dog behind the woodshed and shoot him. They listen to his story and then shoot him. Or not, depending. (...)
At one time, it came down to a choice between destroying an animal and letting it live. Now, there are other possibilities, from a number of levels of obedience classes to restrictions that require a dog to be, for example, muzzled, or kept on a leash, with violations of the restrictions constituting misdemeanor crimes punishable by six months in jail or a $1,000 fine. A new ordinance passed last month allows Herndon to prohibit a person from owning dogs for up to three years. This is a big step forward for Dog Court. In the past, Herndon would seize someone's dog on a Monday and see the same guy with a new dog on Tuesday. "Now we can put a leash on the person," Herndon says.
Excellent! I've always felt strongly that more people should have dogs but also just as strongly that some people shouldn't have them at all. Dog Court is a big step in the right direction, and I can only hope more cities follow San Francisco's lead.
You can see Capt Guldbech and Lt Michael Scott of Animal Care and Control on the Animal Planet show Animal Cops: San Francisco.
Thanks to Derek Powazek for sending in the link to this story! Photo above is by Nicki Ishmael.
posted by lia at 12:23 PM
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February 02, 2005
derek powazek is dog crazy
If you've been noodling around the web for any length of time chances are you've already run across one of Derek Powazek's many projects, like Fray, the magazine of true stories he's been running since 1996, or his photoblog Ephemera.
All of his work on there is beautiful, of course, but I find his dog portraits to be especially arresting, each one just bursting with the individual personality of the pup. I love this one of usually sassy Chieka Chiquita Banana Champ, caught unawares:
Ephemera has a special section called Dog Crazy, where you can purchase lovely full color calendars and even a book of his dog photos. If you live in or around San Francisco, he's available to shoot custom portraits of your four-legged friend.
posted by lia at 04:23 PM
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