Thursday's issues -- Dog Poop

Image by ATIS547 via Flickr

Wednesday, September 22, 2010 (AP)
Dog poop has bright side: Powering Mass. park lamp
By JAY LINDSAY, Associated Press Writer


   (09-22) 02:43 PDT Cambridge, Mass. (AP) --
   It stinks and it's a hazard to walkers everywhere, but
it turns out dog poop has a bright side.

   Dog poop is lighting a lantern at a Cambridge dog park
as part of a months long project that its creator, artist
Matthew Mazzotta, hopes will get people thinking about not
wasting waste.

   The "Park Spark" poop converter is actually two steel,
500-gallon oil tanks painted a golden yellow, connected by
diagonal black piping and attached to an old gaslight-style
street lantern at the Pacific Street Park.

   After the dogs do their business, signs on the tanks
instruct owners to use biodegradable bags supplied on
site to pick up the poop and deposit it into the left tank.
People then turn a wheel to stir its insides, which
contain waste and water. Microbes in the waste give off
methane, an odorless gas that is fed through the tanks to
the lamp and burned off. The park is small but has proven
busy enough to ensure a steady supply of fuel.

   Dog owner Lindsey Leason, a 29-year-old Harvard student,
said she was all for seeing poop in a new light as she watched
her two dogs play at the park.

   "Since I have to pick up dog poop a lot, I think I'd rather have it be
useful," Leason said.

   The project was funded by a $4,000 grant from Council of
the Arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where
Mazzotta earned a master's degree in visual studies last year.

   The 33-year-old Mazzotta, who is not a dog owner, got the
idea after he visited the park with a friend in 2009. Mazzotta
had recently traveled to India and saw people there using poop
in so-called "methane digesters" to cook food. As he watched
the park's trash can fill with bags of poop, he remarked to his friend,
"In other countries, they use that."

   A similar idea to use dog poop for power was floated in
San Francisco about four years ago. But that idea fizzled
in the city's bureaucracy and over concerns about safety,
said environmental scientist Will Brinton, who worked with
Mazzotta on Park Spark and was consulted in the San Francisco
project.

   Cambridge Fire Chief Gerry Reardon had his own questions
about "Park Spark," including whether vandalism or poor design
could cause the tank's insides to spill out and how the methane
would be safely contained and vented. But Park Spark's sturdy
build and safety features persuaded the fire department to give
its approval, he said.     "We try to stay progressive here," Reardon
said.

   Mazzotta's project brings welcome visual distraction to the park,
which is bordered by a rutted street, a weed-filled lot and the
beaten-down backsides of a couple of buildings. Dog owner
Louisa Solano, 68, said she loves Park Spark, though she thought
it was "just a wonderful piece of sculpture, you know, modern art"
when she first saw it.

   The dog-poop converter's colors, symmetry and clean lines
are intentional, but Mazzotta said his greater artistic purpose
is to get people thinking differently about what's around them,
including seeing waste as a resource and how to best use the
free power it produces.

   The practical benefits of the exhibit aren't lost on Mazzotta.

   Burning the methane, which is 30 times more potent as a
greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, helps the environment,
he said. And with dogs dropping tons of poop in cities everywhere,
he thinks the idea of using its untapped power has broad appeal.

   Brinton, president of Woods End Laboratories in Maine, which
specializes in biogas energy development, said biogas from
waste is a potentially major and accessible energy source,
and a novel project like Mazzotta's can highlight that.

   Mazzotta said right now he's not planning to start a
dog poop energy business but is instead focusing on the
ideas behind Park Spark, which will be dismantled at month's
end. To him, the dog poop device helps fill a need for clean
energy and better waste disposal, and all people need to
do to fuel it is look around.

   And be careful where they step.

Tuesday True Stories -- Jailed dogs are cut a break

Here's an article I found on DogTime.com that tells the story of one woman's determination to make a difference in the lives of a forgotten population of shelter animals.  This story broke my heart initially when I learned of these animals, but I was thrilled that they now have such a determined champion.  Please visit the site and read the article.  Maybe you would like to help her?

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A maverick program shines a light on a population of dogs the world rarely hears about and offers hope for others like them.  

Stella arrived at the San Francisco Animal Care and Control shelter (SFACC) seven months ago, emaciated and exhausted. Since November, the four-year-old pit bull has been held in city custody while her registered owner is investigated on charges of starving an animal. She now spends her days in a small kennel, waiting for the legal system to decide what should happen to her.
Stella is but one dog among thousands that the American public only rarely, if ever, sees or hears anything about. These are the dogs who end up in shelters because their owners are in the hospital, have been evicted from their homes, have been jailed or--as with Stella's owner--are being investigated for animal cruelty.

Dowling gets a kiss from Pippa

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To listen to the Road to Rescue interview with Give a Dog a Bone founder Corinne Dowling on Animal Radio Network, click here.

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Give them a chance to be dogs

When she started volunteering at SFACC in the mid-1990s, Corinne Dowling had no idea these "custody dogs" existed. Ironically, many custody dogs become some of the shelter's longest-staying residents, spending months there before the court decides their fate. In most shelters these dogs are kept apart from the adoptable animals, and regular volunteers, for legal and safety reasons, aren't permitted contact with them. So when Dowling learned that an entire group of dogs was neither walked, nor touched, nor even taken out of their kennels to relieve themselves, she spoke to SFACC administrators about tending to these dogs herself. "After all they'd been through, I just thought they deserved better," she says.
An experienced dog handler, Dowling began taking the custody dogs, one at a time, out to the small enclosed yard on the SFACC grounds. There they could chase tennis balls, sniff leaves, and simply relieve themselves in an area apart from where they eat and sleep. In essence, Dowling began giving them the opportunity to just be dogs.
By 1999, her dedication to San Francisco's custody dogs became a full-time endeavor, and Dowling made her undertaking official. She founded the nonprofit agency Give a Dog a Bone specifically to address the needs of dogs in long-term shelter care. Its mission: to relieve the extreme loneliness, boredom, stress, and suffering dogs in enforced custody endure.

Reaching through bars

Dowling's challenges, however, were just beginning. Custody dogs arrive at SFACC, with a whole host of issues--after all, most of them are there because they've been beaten, starved, or medically neglected. A few come in so fearful and distrusting they're deemed dangerous, and aren't allowed to leave their kennels. But Dowling was not content to simply attend to the dogs that are allowed walks and petting. She was determined that all dogs in the custody wing receive affection, attention, and mental and physical stimulation.
With that goal in mind, Dowling created an environmental enrichment program expressly for the wing's kennel-bound dogs. She developed games to encourage as much stretching and moving as possible-[read more]