Whitehorse is a dog town, and that’s never gonna change

I was amused to read the CBC North story, “Whitehorse dog owners, ATV drivers face fines on trail“, the other day.

The story opens:

“Whitehorse city officials are promising to crack down on … dogs running loose on the Millennium Trail along the city’s waterfront.”

My first thought: I’ll believe it when I see it.

My second thought: it’s too little, too late.

Promising to crack down on off-leash dogs in Whitehorse is like promising to prevent Vancouverites from drinking coffee, or like telling an American he can never watch another baseball game.

Whitehorse is a dog town, plain and simple. No amount of enforcement will get dog owners to respect the law. From their view, they now exist above the law.

The reason that vast amounts of dog shit blanket every corner of the city and you can barely walk more than a block without getting accosted by a K-9 has nothing to do with enforcement; it has to do with culture.

To Whitehorse dog owners, leaving your dog off-leash is a fundamental right. Leashes are for wusses or, worse, city folk.

And clean up its excrement? Whatever. This is the Yukon for God’s sake. We don’t have to clean up shit in this bountiful wilderness paradise. Heck, I don’t see anybody cleaning up moose droppings.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that it’s very nearly impossible to go for a walk in Whitehorse and not be bothered by some slobbering, filthy mutt that’s just sort of wandering on its own.

Of course, if the owner happens to be nearby and she happens to notice the fact you don’t appreciate her dog sticking its nose up your butt, she’ll just sort of coo and laugh and say, “Oh, don’t worry. He’s harmless.”

Every dog owner in Whitehorse seems to truly believe that their dog is harmless.

Even the one that nipped my ankle when I was out running a few years back, sending me sprawling.

The owner, several dozen metres down the trail, just waved his arm at me and yelled, “Sorry!” Then he called his dog to follow him.

Yeah, a bleeding, twisted ankle and a bloodied knee, that’s harmless.

Even the dog that ran up to my friend’s on-leash rottweiler and mauled it a few years back. As my friend fought to keep her leashed dog under control, the owner of the off-leash animal stood back and had a laugh at her expense.

That’s harmless.

Even the dog that nipped my son’s hand when he was just 2, down at Rotary Peace Park, that dog was harmless, too.

“I don’t know why he did that,” the owner said. “He never bites anyone!”

We didn’t hang around to test the truth of her claim, since even then she left it off-leash.

And just last year there’s the dog that chased my son around Rotary Peace Park as he screamed in terror.

The owner was nowhere in sight so I beaned the animal with a soccer ball to make it stop. When the owner finally arrived, she had the nerve to accost me for throwing a ball at her dog.

Because, couldn’t I tell, “He only wanted to play!” Yeah, tell that to my son as he lays in my arms sobbing.

It’s gotten that way in Whitehorse. You simply can’t go to a public space anymore without encountering dogs that are wandering free, off-leash.

As if that’s not bad enough, the owners expect you to indulge their animals.

And heaven forbid if you should remind them about the bylaws. When we arrive at playgrounds and there’s a dog off-leash running around, I used to spend some time identifying the owner and then politely ask them to leash their dogs.

Half the time the owner refused with a snarky retort. The other half of the time they just cast me a dirty look and left.

So my son and I don’t even visit parks much anymore. Dealing with the dog people is just too stressful.

Instead, we have taken to hanging out and playing at home.

But as the Whitehorse dog culture grows stronger, even that’s not safe anymore.

I live in Takhini North and the dogs roam free here. There are a very few local owners who leash their dogs when they go for walks, but not many.

In general they absent-mindedly stroll down the street as their animal roams the yards of neighbours, pissing and shitting at will.

I don’t own a dog (obviously) but every week I’m cleaning 5 or 6 mounts of shit from my front yard.

Three neighbours I’ve observed don’t even bother to walk their dogs. When they get home from work they just open their doors and let the animals roam free.

These animals seem to have a regular shitting patterns on various neighbours’ yards. Mine is one of those yards on their regular route.

And so it’s to the point I don’t even let my son and his friends out to play in our own yard. I’m sick of cleaning dog shit off his boots when he happens to step in it or off of his coat when he falls in it.

Sure, I could talk to those neighbours. But my experience with such dialogues has not been successful in the past.

For the most part, when you talk to dog owners who let their animals run free, reminding them of bylaws and common courtesy, they are offended. In some cases, they are aggressive.

It’s been my experience that dog owners who let their animals roam free play by an entirely different set of rules. Like I said before, they view it as a right to let their dogs roam free. The bylaws and common respect for neighbourliness, these things don’t apply to them.

Even if you do manage to get through to a dog owner who lets their animal roam free, it never lasts longer than a week or so. Then they’re back to their old form and there’s dog shit in your yard again.

To be honest, I don’t talk to those neighbours about the issue because I can no longer expect myself to be civil in the discourse. Over a decade dealing with this matter has left me somewhat angry about it.

I’ve just sort of resolved to the fact that I’m a non-dog person living in a dog town. The predominant local culture has elevated the value of dogs to a level greater, I would say, than even children.

I have changed my lifestyle to focus on avoiding dogs owners and their leashless kin. I don’t walk or run the trails anymore. I don’t walk on suburban streets. I rarely take my son to outdoor playgrounds anymore and if we see a dog off a leash when we arrive at one (and we almost always do), we leave.

It’s getting sort of ridiculous, though. There are fewer and fewer places you can go to enjoy Whitehorse’s outdoor recreational areas without stepping in poo or having a strange mutt hump your leg.

Unless you’re a hardcore dog person, Whitehorse is an ever more unpleasant place to live.

And, like I said, enforcement is very unlikely to change that. The dog situation has been left unchecked for far too long in this town, to the point that it’s now an integrated aspect of the local culture.

Yes, Whitehorse is a dog town. And there’s no changing that now.

Bell: Location Services for iPhone not Enabled

I just spoke to a customer service representative who told me that Bell has made a public statement to the effect that, “location services [for the iPhone] have not been launched.”

There was no indication as to when they might actually get around to setting that up.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s a significant oversight as so many aspects of the device depend on location services for full functionality so I’ll certainly be making a refund request.

What’s more, he indicated the fact that the time zone setting for the Whitehorse towers likely won’t get corrected in the foreseeable future. That should cause some grief for some people stepping off the plane up here!

Why the iPhone is Important to the Horse

 

Any day now Apple’s iPhone will be available to Whitehorse residents.

This is huge news: the iPhone is widely regarded as the world’s most advanced handheld computing and telecommunications device.

Along with the significant network upgrade that Bell has installed locally to support the iPhone, and Northwestel’s recent kick-ass fibre upgrade to the internet, the arrival of the iPhone puts the Yukon’s capital on the world map in terms of mobile connectivity.

Which is remarkable, considering we’re just a little town of 20,000+ people.

But is the iPhone really all that big a deal?

In a word: yes.

Whitehorse Sells Municipal Roads to NorthwesToll

The City of Whitehorse has sold its municipal traffic infrastructure to a local private business, NorthwesToll.

The government was locked into the sale after a long period of secret negotiations between the mayor and representatives of the company (which is a fully-owned subsidiary of an Ontario-based consortium of liquor producers named Bomb).

Those who have seen the contract describe the mayor’s signature as “drunken.” The Bomb members of the negotiating team were overheard describing the Whitehorse mayor as a “suit-struck hick.”

NorthwesToll immediately institutes a toll system. (What, you thought the name of the company was a joke?)

Monthly rates are established based on the distance drivers may travel and the speed at which they may drive.

Whitehorse: A Town of Nixon Republicans?

My mom was recently compelled to send me Bill Bryson’s, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, an engrossing and entertaining memoir. Bryson’s descriptions of Des Moines, Iowa, in the 1950s are striking as much for their period charms as for their chilling similarities to contemporary Whitehorse.

One passage in particular seems to have been composed about my current town of residence:

Poor people in my experience have mean dogs and know it. Rich people have mean dogs and refuse to believe it. There were thousands of dogs in those days too, inhabiting every property – big dogs, grumpy dogs, stupid dogs, tiny nippy irritating little dogs that you positively ached to turn into a kind of living Hacky Sack, dogs that wanted to smell you, dogs that wanted to sit on you, dogs that barked at everything that moved. (p. 160-161)

Man, if that doesn’t describe Whitehorse, which should more aptly be named Dogtown, I don’t know what does.

However, Bryson goes on to describe yet another truth about Whitehorse: the inherent abeyance of animal bylaws by certain cliques of residents that perversely regard their pets as companions – or worse – children. Therefore, their whacked logic follows, there’s no need to leash them.

In his childhood Bryson was chased and attacked repeatedly by a dog named Dewey. Like so many contemporary Whitehorse dog owners, Dewey’s owners,

…laughingly dismissed the idea that Dewey had a mean streak and serenely ignored any suggestions that he ought to be kept tied up, as the law actually demanded. They were Republicans–Nixon Republicans–and so didn’t subscribe to the notion that laws are supposed to apply to all people equally. (p. 161)

Man, if I had a donut for every time a dog ran free, barking, and gnashing its teeth at my son within the City of Whitehorse I’d be Tim friggin’ Horton.

What’s most annoying though, as my son hangs limply in my arms, crying in terror as we wait for someone to arrive and haul away this annoying and smelly mongrel, is the audacity of the owner to stroll up slowly, look at us like idiots and say something like, “Oh, don’t be scared, he would never hurt anyone. He’s actually really sweet.”

At which point, my imagination flares with the image of myself grabbing the dog by the scruff of its neck, reaching down its throat into its belly and pulling out the half-gnawed limb of the last child it mauled, then holding it up for its owner and proclaiming, “You call this sweet?”

To which I would not be surprised to see them smile in the emotionless manner of a vampire or serial murderer, calmly take the bloodied and partially-digested fleshy appendange from me, and carry on to terrorize another victim.

Yeah. This is a town of Nixon Republicans.

the end is in sight

My hear soared tonight when I happened upon this shot of the Horse from March 23 last year.

We’re down to the wire, I hope. Seems that, against all odds I’ve survived another northern winter. Don’t know how many more I’ve got in me.

quick note on local public health care

Last week my son ended up in the Whitehorse General Hospital for a few days. While, yes, it sucked big time, I just feel compelled to comment publicly on the amazing people who run our local public health care system.

The guy who answered my 911 call last Monday was helpful, comforting, and professional. The two paramedics in the ambulance that arrived at my house were exemplary: friendly yet professional, comforting yet serious, joking yet efficient. From the moment they walked in my door, I knew my son was in good hands.

In emergency the staff were constantly attentive. They somehow maintained an incredibly positive attitude even as they faced a steady flow of trying situations. While we spent more time there than I would have liked to in the ER, it was a calm and controlled procedure that kept us there and eventually had my son admitted.

Then once we were up in the paediatrics ward, the nurses were insanely attentive, not just to my son but to me as well (I was there with him full time for several days). Then there was the staff member from the First Nations health department that attended to our needs. I’ve never felt so supported and comforted on a hospital visit, and we’ve done a wide tour of hospitals thanks to my son’s medical condition, from the Horse to Hong Kong, from Edmonton to Vancouver.

Yeah, these comments are out of place on this blog, but I just had to say: our local medical providers are insanely awesome. We’re really lucky.

random thoughts on snowy, rutty roads

I don’t think I’ve ever seen the roads so bad in the Horse as this winter.

Methinks there’s a primary cause for this: climate change. Although, I’d venture there’s some bad planning involved, too.

When I moved to the Horse almost 15 years ago, I was told that the City had a pretty simple strategy for maintaining roads in the winter: let the snow pack hard, and clear it once  mid-season, then once more in the spring.

That strategy worked back in the day when it was completely freaking frozen in the Horse all winter, with minimal snowfall. The snow would fall, and basic maintenance augmented the natural packing activity of road travel. The roads were flat, solid, and provided reasonable traction.

These days, though, there’s a very different climate in the Horse. We get a lot of snow now and temperatures are variable. That means roads don’t stay packed; they get deeply rutted during warm spells. And because we have so much snow, those ruts are deep. There isn’t a day that goes by I don’t grind my Beetle’s undercarriage on some rut in a road somewhere in the Horse.

The ruts are sheer ice, too, and offer very little traction. This creates an insanely dangerous driving environment throughout the city.

And it strikes me that the City used to be very efficient at maintaining the quality of roads. I recall they’d sort of swoop into a neighbourhood late one afternoon with an army of dump trucks and snow ploughs, and the roads would be clear by morning. This season, I’ve noticed huge piles of snow collecting up in the middle of roads all over the Horse. City workers seem to be struggling to catch up with the environment, only ever half finishing the jobs they start.

I don’t think it’s the workers’ fault, though. I get the feeling that City management hasn’t figured out a new strategy for coping with the changed climate up here. It’s as though they keep expecting things to go back to the way they were. So instead of cleaning up the mess that’s on the streets right now, they’re biding their time, hoping to force a square peg of service into a round hole of environment. It’s not gonna happen.

Here in Takhini North some residents got served notices that they’re not clearing their sidewalks to the standards defined in City bylaws. That struck me as funny: the snow on the road surface is currently much higher than the sidewalks around here. Most roadways in Takhini North are little more than rutted trails through a snowy hinterland (check out the picture in this post).

Seems to me the City should be fulfilling their own duties to keep auto paths clear before they go hassling citizens about the sidewalks.