Even though I can’t seem to find time to blog, I did make it to a local brewpub last weekend to hear a jazz ensemble. The venue is a neighborhood hangout, with largish tables one shares with potential new friends. Since we live nearby and the band included some instructors from my husband’s school, we soon had a table mostly full of folks we knew, plus a couple we did not know, with two dogs.

The dogs were calmly lying on the floor, and would have stayed out of sight and mind under the table, except for their peculiar odor. One by one, the non-dog-owning folks at that end of the table moved their chairs to the other end, spilling out into aisles.

The dog-owning couple seemed unaware of the growing empty space around them, but my kind husband nonetheless felt compelled to move to that end and engage them. Talk soon turned to the dogs, and the couple told him he was welcome to pet them but might not want to, since they rolled in something nasty on the way over.

Carrion would be my guess, based on the odor.

So this is a great example of a reason to both love and hate California.  Clueless people–Can I call them clueless? Does that make me a hater?–bring carrion-scented animals into a drinking and eating establishment, and people paying to eat and drink don’t mention it to them or alert the manager. They just move as far away as possible. It’s ok to do whatever you want here as long as it doesn’t stop someone else from doing whatever they want, and for Californians, this behavior did not cross that line.

California does not, of course, have a monopoly on clueless dog owners. I spent most of my life living with dogs, and my husband and I owned two sequentially for 20 years. I have little patience for people whose dogs jump on or bark at strangers, since all my dogs have easily learned not to do these things. I also sometimes troubled by dog owners’ inability to see how incompatible dogs are with wild animals. The scent of dogs, even well-behaved dogs on leashes, limits the habitat choices of  wild animals, most of which are threatened by the burgeoning presence of humans and our domestic herds.

In this case, the dogs were of course blameless. Dogs likely consider carrion an appetite enhancer.

Things to unequivocally love about California: September and October! On Central Coast, we call these months the time for the locals: Deep blue, cloudless skies all day, brisk mornings giving way to afternoons in the 70s, hummingbirds everywhere. Yesterday we were in the convertible waiting at a traffic signal when a swarm of butterflies fluttered all around us. I wouldn’t be shocked to see a unicorn.