potrero view

November 2009

Dog City

By Ben Terrall

Though hard economic times have forced many San Franciscans to cut back on their spending, dog owners continue to open their purses and wallets to keep their canines happy.  Suzie Yannes and Shireen Nyden, co-owners of Pawtrero Bathhouse & Feed Company, at 199 Mississippi Street, say their business is expanding.  Nyden and Yannes met while walking their canine companions at the dog park near the Potrero Recreation Center, on Arkansas Street, and launched their flagship store in 2002.  In 2005 they opened a second store, Southpaw Bathhouse and Feed Company, at 199 Brannan Street

Yannes’ and Nyden’s success is in part due to a shift in consciousness about animal diets, which parallels the food movement described in Michael Pollan’s bestselling book The Omnivore’s Dilemma.  According to the pair, their customers realize that feeding their dog a good diet reduces the need for expensive visits to the veterinarian.  Cheap supermarket food will make dogs sick, they asserted, while a dog’s immune system is strengthened by eating healthy food.  Pawtero offers its customers organic, canned vegetables, as well as antibiotic- and hormone-free chicken.

“People cut back on themselves, but not on their pets.  Their pets are like their children,” said  Yannes.  She conceded that her stores no longer sell high-end, pricey dry goods, like cashmere sweaters and fancy leather leashes, but said that focusing on affordable products has helped the business flourish.  Yannes stressed that she and her partner have good relationships with most other local pet stores, and try to buy from local companies whenever possible.  

San Francisco dog walker Luke Browne agreed that demand for doggy services is high, with many in his line of work too busy to take on new clients.  “The industry has grown immensely over the last four years.  That includes more dog walkers as well as more owners wanting our services,” he said.  While dogs may be human’s best friends, the demand for cat services appears to have declined.  According to a colleague of Browne’s, who handles cats, feline business is way down, an opinion shared by Virginia Donohue, co-owner of  Cat Safari in Pacific Heights and Pet Camp in Bayview.  In the past year there’s been a “decline in cat business,” said Donohue.

San Francisco’s dog population – which outnumbers its children – is steadily growing.  Animal Care and Control (ACC) estimates that there are roughly 120,000 dogs in the City, though only approximately 14,000 of them are licensed.  With a fee of $15 a year if a dog is spayed or neutered – roughly half the licensed population – and $28 if not, the licensed population provides a significant revenue stream for San Francisco, with potential for substantially more proceeds if dog owners universally complied with licensing requirements.  According to ACC’s Deb Campbell, the agency doesn’t have the staff or budget to enforce licensing laws.  

Some San Franciscans are less than enthusiastic about the abundance of dogs in the City, with debates raging over the proper size of off-leash areas in local parks.   At McKinley Park, dog lovers are concerned that the slope between the park’s landscaped area and Highway 101 that’s been set aside for off-leash canine activities is dangerous to dogs because of foxtails in the undergrowth, and unsafe to humans due to a population of drug abusers who live in a nearby homeless encampment.  Foxtails can enter a dog’s nose, ears, paws, and eyes, and act like a barbed fish hook, burrowing in. It’s a serious condition that can be life-threatening if not treated promptly.  

According to a Potrero Hill resident who didn’t want to be named, who has lived near McKinley Square for almost two decades, “There have always been dog owners in the neighborhood...during the dot com boom in the late 1990’s most of the startups were located in the South of Market Area. Potrero Hill was located near all the activity, which in turn made it a very desirable place to live.  During the real estate boom, Potrero Hill, once considered a blue collar neighborhood, overnight changed into an area where overbidding for a fix-it-upper became quite the norm, thus causing the area to lose its blue collar charm, since most of the original hillers were selling their homes for top price and moving out of the City. So the climate of the neighborhood changed. Potrero Hill was once an area where everyone knew each other, but became an area where the newly arrived neighbors were more interested in keeping to themselves.”  According to the long-time resident, complaints by newcomers about dogs are overstated.  “Dogs in this neighborhood are well behaved, on leashes, and the owners are responsible,” she said.  

Phil Coulter has lived at 22nd and Rhode Island for three years.  In that time he’s observed new sod being laid twice at McKinley Square, a problem he attributed to excessive dog activity.  Coulter sides with neighborhood activists who feel that it’s important to limit off-leash dog access to the park.  “The dog people think they have a right to run the grass into the dirt,” he said, “but somebody has to step in and say ‘enough.’”  According to Coulter, neighborhood children, including his two year old son Zachary, are being squeezed off the grass.  Describing himself as not anti-dog but also “not a pet person,” Coulter said that the problem of foxtails at McKinley Square should be addressed by the City, which “needs to do better weed control.”  Coulter believes that a new fence should be erected to keep dogs off at least some of the park’s grassy area.

According to Browne, heated debates over the proper use of open space usually settle down into amicable solutions.  “The Dubose Park neighborhood came together and worked their disagreements out,” he said.  Browne conceded that some dog walkers can be discourteous, but insists that most are friendly, respectful and hard-working.  Browne is a member of SF Pro Dog, a professional dog walkers association.  According to the association’s co-director, Nancy Stafford, it’s important for parks to develop a policy of “reasonable shared use.” Such an approach would allow dogs on playing fields when no athletes are present, and other sharing of space.  It’s environmentally counter-productive for dog owners to drive their dogs to parks far away rather than use spaces close to them, and public transportation isn’t dog-friendly, said Stafford.  Stafford believes that dog runs should be incorporated into new developments, such as in Mission Bay.

Kevin Simons, a landscape maintenance contractor with the Mission Bay Maintenance Corporation, stresses that future Mission Bay developments should be designed with more than one entrance to keep trees from being damaged by dog urine. Trees near buildings with multiple entrances haven’t been as badly damaged by chronic abuse by dogs, said Simons. According to Simons, whose dog, Isis, passed away in April, he would never have taken his dog to the Mission Bay dog park, which is located at the end of Barry Street near a sewage treatment facility, and is a small enclosed space covered with gravel, which he called a “transmission vector for disease.”  

     According to Sally Stevens of the San Francisco Dog Owners Group – which is dedicated to promoting responsible dog ownership – and who serves on the City’s Animal Welfare Commission, the debate over off-leash areas will likely heat up, as the Golden Gate National Recreation Area will be issuing a new dog management plan next spring which will severely limit off-leash activities.  Dog owners squeezed out of GGNRA will likely migrant to City-owned open spaces.

The current number of off-leash areas “is obviously not enough,” said Peter Brastow, Founding Director of Nature in the City, but “that doesn’t give dog owners the right to trash parklands.  Floral and faunal diversity has decreased in our native grassland habitats as a result of years of uncontrolled off-leash dog access in our natural areas.  For the record, dogs are legally allowed in virtually every park in the system, including within and throughout all of the natural areas, as long as they are on a leash.’


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