Fetch the Paper: Digital Dog Edition

"Fragrant meat" gets kicked off the menu

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that dog will be nowhere on the menu during the upcoming Olympics in Beijing. Specifically, it's being removed from "official" Olympic restaurants, and other restaurants are instructed to discourage people from ordering it. In fact, Beijing seems to be instituting a lot of cosmetic changes for the games: everything from an anti-spitting campaign to an attempt to reduce air pollution by only allowing drivers to use cars on alternate days.

Animal activists shouldn't rejoice too quickly, though; dogs probably won't be saved from the pot for good. South Korea banned dog meat during their own turn at hosting, but the ban wasn't enforced much after the games were over.

An American Dog in Paris - Epilogue

I just wanted to post a short epilogue to let Pali's fans know how she's doing (merci beaucoup to all of you who have written asking about her eye).

The breathe-a-big-sigh-of-relief news is that the eye specialist here did not think she needed surgery yet. After a quick in-office procedure (a corneal debridement to be exact) and another round of antibiotics, she is doing splendidly. Yesterday she got the all-clear to go back to her usual bush-whacking, run-for-the-sheer-joy-of life ways.

It's great to see both of her eyes clear and luminous again as she gazes back at me.

So, besides being a bit homesick for Paris and long afternoons spent at cafes (we could just be homesick for vacation...), we're settling back into life in San Fran nicely.

An American Dog in Paris Part VII (“Sept")

The weather finally cleared up for a day, so we decided to explore Montmartre, the colorful artistic hilltop district of Moulin Rouge fame. If you’ve seen the adorable French film, Amelie, then you have a good idea of its charms and personality—the streets, shops, and restaurants are very possibly the most charismatic I’ve ever seen. Art and the artistic spirit fill the streets and justifiably so; artists such as Picasso, Dali, Van Gogh, and Monet lived and worked here. Even now, the streets are lined with artists selling recent paintings or quick sketches done on the spot.

Pali gets her portrait sketched.

As we walked through a popular courtyard, an artist caught my eye. He looked to be in his early seventies with a flowing grey beard, a battered black hat, and what can only be described as a twinkle in his eye. He puffed leisurely on his pipe, watching the tourists go by. As I walked by he saw Pali and smiled. Then, almost as an afterthought, he offered, “Portait for le chein?” I smiled and walked on. Then I stopped and went back; suddenly a portrait of Pali in Montmartre seemed like the perfect souvenir of our trip.

I put Pali on my lap, and he quickly got to work, keeping up a constant flow of small talk while Stephen kept luring Pali to look at the right angle with a treat.
“Doggie, over here.”
“Good doggie, yes, look here.”
“Voila—yes, excellent.”

The artist and his work.

Occasionally he’d snap at a tourist whose flash went off right next to his face, telling them off in a mixture of English, French, and Spanish. And boy howdy were there tourists! We must have been the highlight of the afternoon for several dozen tourists, who stopped to see—what I have to admit was pretty adorable—Pali sitting jauntily for her portrait that was being sketched by a man who looked like he stepped straight out of a novel. The artists around us got a bit peeved; nobody was looking at their work, instead everyone was nudging their neighbor and pointing at Pali. The final product turned out nicely—now we just have to figure out how to take it home!

Pali at Sacré-Cœur.

Naturally we went by Sacré-Cœur, the gorgeous, white basilica built on the tallest hill in Paris. We took turns going in, since dogs are definitely not allowed in churches. We also managed to find some leftover hay from a sporting event that Pali deigned to relieve herself on (otherwise, it was slim pickings for dog-friendly grass in all of Montmarte).

An American Dog in Paris Part VI (“Six”)

Pali sunning at Le Tour Eiffel.

The last few days in Paris have been reminiscent of San Francisco weather in the summer: cool, cloudy, and even a bit rainy. Today though, for a few glorious hours, the sun was back, smiling benevolently down on us. We couldn't resist capturing some of the fun on the Champ de Mars, where a moment of sunshine seems to draw Parisians and tourists alike to picnic on the grass. It’s a good thing we enjoyed it while we could as more rain clouds blew in this evening.

Yesterday we journeyed to another park, Buttes Chaumont, far from the tourist attractions. The park has quite a storied history—it was once a gallows for executions, then a quarry, and then a city dump. Baron Haussmann, Napolean III’s city planner and architect, turned it into an oasis in the middle of a working neighborhood.

Parc des Butte Chaumont.

From its peaks and hilltops you can find spectacular views of Paris, and, like every other park in Paris we’ve been to, it’s a joy to wander around somewhat aimlessly, waiting to see what beauty lies around the corner. Pali greatly enjoyed her outing. We’ve decided since the “stay at home administering eye medicine” regime didn’t seem to be working, we’d take her medicine with us and get her outdoors, otherwise we were worried she’d go a bit stir-crazy.

On the health front, Pali saw an eye specialist today, Dr. Laforge, who looks more like a fantastic Frenchman with his twirly moustache than anyone I’ve seen so far. His personality matched his moustache. In a strange way, Pali’s eye malady has had its benefits, allowing us to meet people and have conversations that have given us a new perspective on Paris (just trying to find the “glass-half-full” perspective). The bottom line is that this problem is not going to go away on its own. He feels that she has a congenital predilection that makes her corneal ulcers recur, which means that she will need surgery to fully fix the problem to keep it from happening again.

Dr. Laforge examines Pali.

He showed us the procedure on his Apple laptop (a move which immediately endeared him forever to my husband, a media man and an Apple man to the—ah-hem—core). I’m afraid I am going to wish very much that I didn’t see the video—imagining my poor Pali going through that makes me go a bit quivery inside. So, first up on our to-do list when we get home to San Francisco is to find an eye specialist. If anyone has a good recommendation, please do pass it along.

Au revoir for now.

An American Dog in Paris Part V (“Cinq”)

Bonjour. This morning found me awake at a much-too-early hour. I’m afraid when we met our French friends last night for a drink and conversation, my “decaf café crème” might have been “caf.” So far we’ve had no problem adjusting to the French habit of staying up late and getting up later; our apartment has these electrical shutters that fit outside the window, and they are nothing short of miraculous—it can be a cozy, dark cave in here at high noon! But alas, this morning I’m finding  myself up early and tip-toeing around to let Stephen and Pali sleep.

Pali with her collar.

Pali is finally doing better—yesterday was the first day that her eye seemed improved. At our follow-up appointment on Friday, Dr. Flachaire wasn’t pleased with the progress and would have made an appointment for us with her favorite eye specialist if he hadn’t been on vacation for the month. The cut is deep, and even with two days of round-the-clock care, had barely shrunk. She added three more medications to the rotations (we’re up to seven total), and told us to keep the Elizabethan collar on her pretty much at all times. I hate doing it to her, but she’s adjusted pretty well—banging her way around the furniture, slurping her water and thoroughly soaking the inside of the collar in the process. All of the efforts seem to be helping. I’m hoping for a much better visit with the vet on Monday.

Le Tour Eiffel at night.

Since the light make’s Pali’s eye uncomfortable, we’ve been keeping the shades down and limiting her outdoor time (she is starting to go a bit stir-crazy though, as is my husband). The positive of this is that we've been going out at night more. And the Champ du Mars (the park in front of the Eiffel Tower) is a fabulous, energetic vision of people out enjoying their city at night. Picnickers lounge all over the grass chatting away, drinking wine, and watching Le Tour Eiffel light up on the hour.

If we go out during the day, we go out in two-hour little sprints —this, and the fact that it rained this week, means that we’ve finally started using the Metro on a regular basis. We’ve also discovered that while dogs Pali's size aren’t technically allowed on the Metro, nobody seems to mind. If the car is too crowded, we wait for the next train to be polite to other passengers and to be kind to Pali—the next train never seems to be more than five minutes away anyway. This discovery has been particularly handy since the vet is all the way across town in the 4th (you’d think that would be  rather close to the 7th, but the arrondissements are circular, somewhat like the shell of the beloved escargot, a uniquely French culinary specialty that still manages to shock me every time I see it translated on a menu quite bluntly as "snails").

She is an excellent ambassador for her species—she’s never been on a train before, but she just sits under my feet, peeking out from between my knees, as we fly through the underground tunnels of the city, often screeching around corners that make me a bit nervous. She actually gets so comfortable she lies down with her nose right between someone else’s feet. I try to keep a close eye to make sure she isn’t in danger of being stepped on (this definitely goes for her tail too, which I tuck under her or me).

An American Dog in Paris Part IV (“Quatre”)

I was getting ready to write a new post yesterday, trying to decide what aspect of Parisian life with a dog to report on—the new dog bakery, the first to open in France, or the fun time we had returning to Bois de Vicennes on a doggie play date with an American couple from Oakland who are living here for the year, or our trip to the Louvre on a free (read: very crowded) day, or maybe the great new dog scarf we got for Pali to wear that seems to have broken through some unspoken barrier and allowed Parisians to stop to pet Pali on the street—but instead a new priority presented itself yesterday, my husband’s birthday. When Pali jumped up on the bed for her usual morning cuddle, we noticed that her right eye could barely open.

This is a path we’ve been down before; the symptoms looked all too familiar. Over Memorial Day weekend in May, Pali injured her eye either playing with my parent’s dog, Leo, or chasing after bunnies that have taken up residence in one of the bushes of my parent’s backyard. It took four trips to the vet (one, naturally, to the emergency vet on Memorial Day) before the corneal ulcer finally healed.

We decided we needed to take her to a French veterinarian right away, birthday plans would wait. The first consideration was how to communicate with a vet—it’s not a terribly fair wish—I’m sure French couples with their dog in San Francisco have to speak English, but I wanted to find a vet who at least spoke a little English. We have been practicing our meager French with several Parisians over coffee (café crème) who had responded to my Craigslist post offering English conversation for some help with French, but I knew we were far from being able to even brokenly discuss our dog’s health concerns in French.

Visiting Mon Bon Chien

Luckily, we had journeyed to Mon Bon Chien, the afore-mentioned dog bakery in the 15th arrondissement on Saturday looking for dog food and had met Harriet, an American pastry chef who found out that women, much less American women, do not get jobs as pastry chefs in Paris, so rather than leave, she opened the first dog bakery in all of France—the first in Europe, actually. She was a great deal of fun, a woman with spunk and spirit who taught me a colorful French phrase to use in retort if someone tells me Pali shouldn’t be on the Metro (let’s just say I think I’d need a bigger personality to get away with it). So, as soon as we realized our situation, I called Harriet with a plea for help. Do you know of a vet who speaks English?

An American Dog in Paris – Part III (“Trois”)

The Parisian lifestyle is one that we’re all quickly becoming quite fond of: leisurely lunches at a sidewalk café, flexible schedules that adjust to the weather (it’s a sunny day=no museums), and permission to savor life in its simplicity. To be honest, we’ve only been inside one church so far, and we haven’t been into a museum yet. Neither of us have ever been to a European city and not immediately started hitting the big, well-known cultural attractions. Instead of going inside the Louvre, we’ve been walking through it’s vast courtyards every morning. And we discovered it while it’s empty of people, empty of the throngs of tourists that usually swarm all over it’s famous nooks and crannies. I love seeing the courtyard free of people, just us and our little Pali trekking through, awed by the statues, the history, and the can-you-believe-we-have-this-all-to-ourselvesness.

Pali at the Louvre.

I’d like to think that we’d have taken this approach with or without Pali—that was one of our goals, to just be in the city, no agendas, no checklist of monuments and cathedrals that we had to see, but I don’t know if we would have resisted the temptation to join all of the other tourists at the famous sites. With Pali (avec un chien), we’re compelled to do things differently this time. She isn’t allowed inside museums or churches, and, not wanting to leave her alone until she feels more at home here, we’ve just been opting for excursions where she is welcome. This city favors small dogs (pooches in a bag can go on the metro or buses, while dogs Pali’s size are only allowed on the RER, a fast and efficient train that links the suburbs with the city center, but has fewer stops by far than the Metro), so we walk a lot, discovering the city in a way we never did before when we relied on the Metro. My husband is enjoying this new style. “I never understood the layout of the city and how all of the neighborhoods are connected,” he said yesterday as we explored the 7th arrondissement, our new home until the end of the month. “Now that we’re walking more I feel like I know the city so much better.”

We walk all over the city.

Every other day at a minimum we have to find an area for Pali to run in off-leash abandon; hence our trips to the edges of the city where tourists rarely tred. This quest led us to Bois de Boulogne, the largest park in Paris, and a former royal hunting reserve which was transformed along with the rest of Paris into it’s current design in the early 1800s by Baron Haussmann, Napoleon’s civic planner. “Bois” means “woods” or “forest,” and we were pleasantly surprised to find that they really are a woods---a lovely, dark and deep woods with winding paths to get lost on. Pali came upon a series of canals, with, yet again, ducks! We heard a splash, the flapping of wings, and loud quaking sounds I’d swear were duck curses. Then we came around the corner and saw her in hot pursuit of several Mallards. Luckily it was a small pond this time, so she came back quickly, mighty pleased with herself. We later saw many French dogs jumping in and out of these canals, so she wasn’t too out of form.

An American Dog in Paris - Part II ("Deux")

Bonjour again from Paris. We are here, somewhat settled in, quite jet-lagged, and enjoying exploring this most gorgeous city. Napoleon set out to make Paris the most beautiful city in the world during his short but highly effective emperorship in the early 1800s, and it worked. Granted, a good many statues and national treasures are spoils of war, but you can’t look anywhere without seeing grandeur.

Pali at the Louvre's pyramid.

Having Pali with us has made this experience in Paris unique. We were here nine years ago as a young couple newly engaged, acting the typical tourists. This time, in addition to snapping our fair share of photos, we’re always on the lookout for  good grass (and I'm afraid I don't mean that euphemistically)! The great irony of Paris is that it is one of the greenest cities in the world with over 400 parks (some extremely small, some former hunting grounds that stretch for miles).

However, almost all of these parks are off limits to dogs (signs with a big red “x” through a dog are posted all around the perimeter)!

No dogs allowed.

This has been my greatest disappointment so far. While dogs seem to be allowed at most indoor establishments, much of the grass is prohibited. My guess is that this ban is a direct result of the Parisians' famous disinclination to pick up their dog’s excrément. Although they no longer employ scooters to drive around and scoop up what the dogs leave behind on the streets (owners are now supposed to pick up after their own dogs or face a stiff fine), there are still a lot of landmines on the sidewalks. A survey I saw said that 95 percent of dog owners say they pick up after their dogs, but in reality it’s about 65 percent, hence, no doggie privileges on grass used by humans.

And use the grass they do. The city lives outdoors. The parks and jardins are filled with families picnicking, children playing, friends talking, and couples kissing and kissing, and kissing—I am not exaggerating; couples are entwined in each other’s arms for hours. It’s no wonder they have a kiss named after them.

An American Dog in Paris – Part One (“Un”)

Bonjour! I’m Daneen Akers, a freelance writer for Fetch and a San Francisco dog lover spending almost five weeks this summer in Paris. My husband, Stephen, and I are both teachers and decided to try a home exchange over the summer along with our “first born,” Pali, an eight-year-old Beagle/Corgi mutt who stole our hearts the moment we laid eyes on her. Neither of us can remember where we first heard the rumor, but we both have long had the impression that Paris is one of the most dog-friendly cities in the world. Both because we wanted to test this premise, and because we couldn’t imagine living without our Pali girl for five weeks, we chose Paris as our home exchange destination with the express plan of bringing Pali along. Over the next five weeks, I’m going to be sharing our adventures with you here on the Fetch blog—judging from the number of well-heeled dogs in our SF neighborhood, I can’t be the only one who’d like to bring her pooch on vacation. I’ll do my best to share my experiences, tips, and general impressions.

Winter's Over, Folks!

Ok, it's still February, but we're having that first wave of warm weather, so it's time to send out the first reminder of the season: Be very careful of leaving your pets in a warm car.

Today in the grocery store parking lot I saw the first true sign of spring: A small, thickly coated dog in the back seat of a car, panting lightly from the heat. The car's windows were open a bit, and the car was in partial shade, so the dog was not in distress but... a few degrees warmer, just a little less shade, and this could have been dangerous for the dog. I know ten minutes earlier I had opted to leave Bennie home because I thought it could be just a tad too warm.

So, this is your first nudge of the new season. Let's all be aware.