Nanny-state ninnies and a little common sense
By Gina Spadafori
May 9, 2008

Nearly every morning Heather and I go get coffee. Or groceries. Or breakfast. She’s the queen here, and rank has its privileges. She trots to whatever car we’re test-driving that week for DogCars.com, I hold the door open for her and she jumps into the shotgun seat.
It’s my only exception to the rule that dogs be harnessed or crated, and I figure it’s a low-risk endeavor.
Little traffic at that time of morning, and we’re not going very far. Plus, there’s this: She’s closing in on 12, and her morning errand makes her very happy. And that makes me very happy.
A couple days ago about 7:30 a.m. , with the temperature around 55 degrees, she and I went to pick up a few items at the store. The sun was low, the parking lot shaded. I opened the moon roof and dropped the windows a couple inches, although honestly, it was plenty cool.
I came back to find a flier on my windshield.
“YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW!” it screamed. “YOU ARE KILLING YOUR DOG!”
I look in the window. Heather smiles. Hmmmm.
I turn my attention back to the flier. The rest explains how in California, it’s illegal to leave your dog in the car “in hazardous conditions.” Yes, well, I know that, and I wouldn’t have taken her out if the conditions were hazardous. I didn’t need a law to keep me from doing it either.
Gawd, I hate California.
It’s not really a bad thing that it’s now specifically illegal to leave a dog in a hot car, but it was illegal before, in a more generalized way, under animal cruelty laws.
What bugged me was the smug superiority of the person who left the flier there, who thought I was a “bad” dog owner for … what? Making an old dog happy in a situation with little to no risk at all?
In fact, the conditions were pretty darn nice in front of the Whole Foods, where the yoga babes were coming in for their post-meditation goji berry juice and the lobbyists from the multimillion-dollar riverbluff homes were queuing up in the Starbucks drive-though in the parking lot.
I crumpled the flier. In a fit of civil disobedience, I was tempted to put it not in the bin marked “recycling” but rather in the one marked “trash.” But of course, I didn’t.
Dear Anonymous Nanny-State Ninny: Leaving fliers on luxury SUVs in an affluent neighborhood (Note: Not my car, not my neighborhood) at a time when the dog in question was not at all at risk marks you as a gutless worm with the common sense of a snail. (Apologies to worms and snails.)
Hey, maybe you should run for office!




… to announce that my dog McKenzie (a/k/a McKutie), last seen on this blog


