LIFE'S A BEACH

I could have titled this post Life's A Bitch .. Two of Them .. but that would have been tacky and potentially offensive and when would I ever want to offend anyone *cough cough*

This week has been extremely spring like here in southern Ontario and it also happened to be Collette's spring break. So being us, when we saw the sun shining and the temps going into the double digits we packed up the girls and off to the beach we went

Hayley looked forward to the day so that she could work on her tan
Terra, however, decided the day was more suited to hunting sticks
Hunting sticks is not a simple endeavour. Sticks are crafty quarry. Devious you could say. You never know where they could be hiding. Sometimes they go turtle on you and dig themselves into the sand
Some times the wild stick could be hiding behind hills. Luckily, sticks cannot resist the super secret border collie inducement cry and can be "hollared" out of the hollows. Roughly translated into human speech, the cry means "Hey stick, get your ass over here so I can chew on you"
Hayley doesn't cry for sticks. She would much rather appeal for cookies. And who could resist such an appeal?

Back to the stick hunting. These Toronto Beaches sticks are particularly clever. When being hunted by puppy border collies, their last resort is to flee into Lake Ontario. This was especially effective. When we first took Terra to the beach last summer, she was very eager to swim. An entire winter has passed and now she finds herself having to relearn this skill. At first, she tried doing some kind of funky border collie dance to entice the stick out of the water ..

But the stick was impervious to this dance so Terra knew there was only one thing to do: Go swimming
Wrangling a stick out of the lake is no easy task. They are wily and agile and perhaps this particular stick came from special underwater trees cultivated by a race of sentient dolphins ... No, I haven't been smoking anything, I'm just tired. At any rate, it was no small feat for Terra to grasp her prey but she had help, with Hayley coaching on the side ..
So even though the waves looked pretty daunting to her, Terra is not easily put off her prey. She's never seen a sheep. For all she knows, this is thing she's supposed to herd

Hayley is not overly impressed. Here she is asking "If she eats the stick, does that mean I get her cookie?
So wrangling sticks is a solo activity. But there is one critter that requires two border collies to herd. A critter so baffling and strange it requires all the brain power to two herders to bring successfully home. Yup, it takes two border collies to safely bring home a "dad"
Below is a little video with some of our high lights of our day at the beach



Life's A Beach from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.



DOG OWNERS ARE PEOPLE TOO: A LOCAL CALL TO ARMS

I'm a dog owner. I'm a citizen of my city. Give me my rights.


Toronto city council, an organization that thought by banning legal gun clubs that have existed in this city for a hundred years would stop gangsters from shooting each other, has had yet another stroke of brilliance: Let's ban dogs, leashed or otherwise, from the most popular beaches in the city.

The whole thing has to do with Toronto wanting to acquire a "blue flag" designation of environmental cleanliness for its beaches. I have yet to determine if this designation really means much in the way of pollution but since its international, and people will read about us in the press, city council has a hard on because now the rest of the world, to paraphrase Sally Fields, will "like us, they really really like us" They have yet to study the issue if dogs on the beach, if dog feces, will affect them getting this blue flag, they will get to that study some day but in the mean time, with no clear evidence to support their thesis they are denying me, as a dog owner, my rights to use a public space.

It really is an amazing thing. Anyone who has ever been to the area in Toronto called The Beaches knows the popularity of this area to dog owners; on a weekend hundreds of dogs will amble along the beach. I know people who have moved there because it has always been known as a "dog friendly" area. And yes, there is an issue with people not picking up their dog shit, I've posted several times about that, but the fact is, all these people who go to the beach with their dog .. ARE CITIZENS OF THIS CITY AND DESERVE TO BE TREATED EQUALLY.

Sorry, I'm trying to shout from North York down to City Hall

Two years ago they started posting that dogs were no longer allowed on the beaches, even on a leash, outside of the two designated off leash areas, those being Balmy Beach and Kew Beach. Fair enough, I guess. Dogs had been allowed on leash in those areas before but since the two off leashes are pretty big, I was OK with what I thought was a compromise. And in the winter, dogs have always been allowed off leash on the beaches from the snow fence down to the water line. Now that is all gone.

I quite frankly don't buy the environmental concerns, mostly because it has yet to be proven. The city and the province can't seem to be able to come up with anything conclusive that proves that having dogs on the beaches is a hazard to any one's safety as it relates to the water. Everyone is pulling out the old "we have to think about the kids" argument which is bullshit in this instance. We are supposedly talking about water purity; to me, when they bring up child safety the agenda seems more oriented to safety, to dogs being out of control. Fair enough, I've blogged about that as well, there are too many owners in this town who do not have control over their dogs and we need to address that .. but be honest about it, don't hide it behind the environment.

So we have this dubious argument, that cannot be proven,and this action, of banning dogs from the beaches, that no one outside of this city seems to support. And that seems to be a good enough excuse to take away my rights, because that is really what we are talking about: my rights, the rights of every dog owner. These are PUBLIC lands, to be used by the PUBLIC in any legal fashion, and now I am being denied those rights. It is simply a case where our elected leaders are deciding who gets to use the beach. Yes, you can say I can still use the beach, just don't bring my dog ... well, that is why we go there. We don't go there to swim, the lake is usually too cold and its been dirty a long time, and not just from e coli, but from general pollution. We don't play volleyball and we don't lay around getting skin cancer .. we go to play with Miss Hayley. Isn't that my right? We've always followed the rules .. pick up the poop, keep her on leash in the on leash areas, monitor and control her behaviour in the off leash, avoid heavy traffic areas .. because the rules made sense. This does not make sense.

I want to keep this post brief and to the point. Here it is: Dog owners are being denied rights they once held and I think it is unfair. Surely, city council should wait until they have completed the study that will tell me what, if any impact, having dogs on the beach will have on the Blue Flag label. And surely, they should have waited until more people in this city have had their say; this is just not an issue for the Beaches neighbourhood, it is an issue for all dog owners in the city, many of whom travel some significant distances just to enjoy the beach.

This is a call to arms. If you are in the GTA contact your local councillor and ask him/her how they can deny certain citizens of this city the right to enjoy a public space. Contact Councillor Paula Fletcher, chair of the parks committee who defends this action; ask her how an elected official can so blithely deny rights to thousands and thousands of city residents. If you are not in the GTA contact the provincial gov't and your local councillor, this is not just a Toronto issue. While in Parry Sound a bylaw officer told me that dogs were not allowed on the beach for this very issue .. so you and your dog, or your friends who have dogs, are being denied enjoyment of public spaces to indulge an unproven political whim.

This strikes me as very arbitrary and that is very scary. Think about it; the politicians who are supposed to represent YOU are now denying ME the use of PUBLIC space that I PAY for because it MAY have some kind of detrimental effect on .. um .. something ...

I'm pissed off. I want you to be pissed off too. Miss Hayley is not pissed off. But look at this video and you will understand, that if she can again go back to that beach, she will just be very sad.

BACK TO THE BEACH & AN ORNOTHOLOGICAL PHENOMENON

This past weekend was another beach weekend. It was Miss Hayley's idea. How do you know when your dog wants to go to the beach? Well, the little flip flops, straw hat with holes for the pricked ears and the sunglasses on the border collie were a give away.

If you read the last post about Hayley going to the beach well ... consider this a sequel. Like most sequels it reprises many of the elements from the original with a couple of new twists. All the original elements are here: Dogs running on the sand, dogs swimming in the water, dogs being herded because our border collie thinks they are water sheep ....

One of the new elements in the sequel was the introduction of a character from Hayley's park movies: This is Caine, part of the group of dogs that come to our local dog park. As always, when Hayley finds one of her doggie buddies in a new context/location, she was totally convinced that Caine was lost and it was her duty to herd him back home.

We also came across a guy with his own pair of border collies. One was a senior, around nine years and the other was under two . These are what I call "twitchy" borders; so wired for action they twitch. The nine year old female would bring me her ball to toss and would lay her head down, ball in her jaws, her mouth twitching the whole time ... I don't know if the ball was the sheep or I was. And I suspect there must be some kind of bi-law restricting the number of border collies allowed on the beach at one time; get too many and you'd have groups of sun burnt tourists all huddled together, up and down the sand.

One of the interesting things that happend while we were there was a bird behaviour I had not before witnessed. A long line of birds built up out on the lake, very close to the water, pretty much on the surface. The line of birds stretched almost across the entire horizon.

We think the birds were cormorants. As they flew along in this line, you could see them lifting and moving as they ... apparantly .. changed position. This went on pretty much for most of the three or four hours we were there.

Not really sure what this is all about. Mating ritual? Seasonal behaviour? Big sale at The Gap? Who knows.

So here is the little video of the day. There are a couple of good shots of the birds, I think. We are not positive that they are cormorants, the distance made it difficult to see . If anybody has any idea about what this is, please feel free to leave a comment or e mail. Me being me I have a theory: Either its the end of the world and the cormorants know it or: The day hold donuts just came on sale at Tim Hortons.

Beach Two from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

LIFE IS A BEACH

A hot, sunny day in Toronto. The second week of July and we have had few of these so some kind of primal impulse demands: Off to the beach!

Or, this being Toronto, off to the Beaches .. or is it the Beach? Let me explain. So Toronto sprawls along this puny body of water known as Lake Ontario, something like 7,000 square kilometers of water, smallest of the Great Lakes, separates us from the USA ... it's just a lot of water, ok? Toronto has something like 46 kilometers of waterfront but when people say the Beaches they are usually to referring to a stretch of public beaches, east of Yonge Street. For as long as I have lived in Toronto we have called this neighbourhood the Beaches but now, for some reason, they want us to call it the Beach ... Miss Hayley cocks her head and looks at me and says "Sand, water, the swimming dogs I refer to as Water Sheep .." and she begins trotting herself to the subway.

The Beaches have two "off leash" areas, where dogs are allowed to run at large. Dogs running at large is a big issue in Toronto. We have traffic jams, pollution, escalating gun crime, crumbling infrastructures, cops being busted as dope dealers, people who can't afford food and rent in the same month ... and the city government is obsessed with dogs running around without their leashes. In point of fact it is illegal for dogs to be on any beach in Ontario (unless designated leash free) even on leash. Something about maintaining some kind of environmental status. On hot days in Toronto your eyes tear and your lungs burn but dammit, we don't have dogs on the beach ... but I digress. This isn't about politics, it's about border collies on the beach.

So paranoia about dog poop aside, there are a few off leash areas in the Beaches. One is a large fenced in area at Kew Beach, where the shoreline is mostly gravel, there are a lot of weeds growing around, and the sand is more gravel ... all of which concerns Miss Hayley not a whit. There is water here. And rocks. And Water Sheep. Understand: Miss Hayley has never actually seen a sheep. This is a working dog that took a very early retirement .. like at birth. So, dogs are sheep, animals of lesser intelligence whose sole purpose is to be herded. Mind you, in Hayley's world, pretty much everything alive is an animal of lesser intelligence. Including me. But her food comes in bags, and I have thumbs and access to scissors, so she tolerates me.

If you have watched some of the other Miss Hayley videos on this blog you have seen several shots of her wading around in the water. Wading is the operative term. Hayley does not swim. Oh, Hayley can swim, and she swims quite well. If Collette or I are swimming she will go out with us as far as we go; you can grab her by the base of her tail and she will pull you through the water; she is a strong swimmer. She can swim but in true border collie fashion she just chooses not to. It may have something to do with not liking when her feet leave the earth. Border collies are swift, agile, nimble runners, if there is nothing solid under one's paws, you are not running ... that would not be logical. So, when the Water Sheep are foolishly venturing out into the deep water, our border collie's herding technique changes from gripping (a grip is when the border collie turns her head, opens her mouth, places it around the shins of the animal being chased, then swiftly closes her jaws, causing the sheep to lose its footing .. this is not biting .. oh no .. this is gripping ...) to loudly barking. Incessantly, loudly barking. I am not sure what Miss Hayley is saying when she does this, perhaps something like: "You do realize, I know you are coming back, so you can't lure me out there, and when you do get back, boy are you getting bitten .. er .. I mean gripped"

When one owns the world's only Water Sheep herding dog, it is refreshing to watch other dogs playing; yes, playing. Humans throw balls into the water, the dogs swim into the water, dogs fetch the balls, dogs return the balls to their humans. This is not Miss Hayley behaviour. Humans throw spherical objects into the water, Water Sheep think about swimming into the water, World's Smartest Dog lunges into the water and turns the Water Sheep back towards shore, leaving spherical object to bob in the water, forlorn and unfetched. World's Smartest Dog smugly lays on the beach, surveying her masterpiece of mayhem.

Though, it should be noted here for the record, Miss Hayley actually waded into water, put a ball in her jaws, brought it back up the beach and dropped it at my feet. But surely this was not fetching. This was tennis ball herding. With a very special grip. Um .. sure.

Miss Hayley is adept at herding all kinds of critters. Here she has just successfully herded a hairy video editor who, in turn, apparently just herded a runaway sandal.

After a long and arduous day of Water Sheep herding what is a border collie and her pack leaders to do? Well, obviously, they go have a beer. Well, the humans have beer. Miss Hayley has hand baked goodies from the Three Dog Bakery called Pup Tarts ... I know, I know, so please stop snickering.

Here is the little video I made to accompany Collette's photos. In the long shots you will see what we Torontoians refer to as "haze". Everyone else calls it smog. Ah, well, it was still a great day. Music is .. hell, you'll know it ...

Miss Hayley on the Beach from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.