Tweets -

A dog once bounced up, nose first, into my chest as I was birding at Marymoor. At the time, I was looking through my binoculars, so I didn't see him coming. Without a thought, my fist came down to protect my optics. The dog got a *firm* bonk on the nose, and suddenly went running off elsewhere.

As *the* person with the most experience birding in a dog area (care to challenge that assertion?), I will say that dogs, dog people, and birders, can get along just fine. In fact, I've been very pleased by the increasing number of positive interactions between myself and the regular dog-walkers at Marymoor. And SODA has done a huge amount of work at Marymoor. Quite a bit of that work has involved fencing, which has kept dogs out of some of the more sensitive parts of the park, including some areas that are technically *within* the off-leash zone. The have posted signs. They also do some (though not enough) education of dog owners about responsible use of the park. And they have often been responsive to issues.

I would also have to say that there appears to be a population of complete a**holes who own dogs. I think it is the fawning nature of some dogs that these people bask in. Believe me, these people can't find anything more intelligent than a dog to fawn over them. This particular (but rather small) subset of the inhuman species has been unbelievably rude to me on a multitude of occasions. For simply requesting that a woman call off her dog who was repeatedly jumping on me, and for informing people that their dog needed to be leashed outside of the off-leash area (information provided in most cases in the most diplomatic tone I could come up with), I have been sworn at (some mild-looking women seem to have been former sailors) and yelled at. Some instances have verged on physical violence.

Hopefully, their dogs will provide them some comfort from the mental anguish and spiritual emptiness with which they are plagued.

NOW, I think it is time to let this thread die. I think we've consumed enough bandwidth on Tweeters with this subject. It would reflect poorly on the birding community if both cats AND dogs were on the banned-subject list; people might start to think we didn't like animals.

== Michael Hobbs
== Kirkland, WA
== http://www.scn.org/fomp/birding.htm
== birdmarymoor at verizon.net
----- Original Message -----
From: Joemeche at aol.com
To: GuttmanB at evergreen.edu
Cc: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 5:34 PM
Subject: Re: [Tweeters] Re: Dogs in birder areas


In a message dated 10/10/2005 1:16:18 PM Pacific Daylight Time, GuttmanB at evergreen.edu writes:
"Oh, he won't hurt you." If anyone knows an appropriate reaction to that situation, I've love to hear it.
How about, "No, but I might hurt him!"

Cheers,
Joe Meche
Bellingham


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