Yolo SPCA will be featuring pet-themed face masks for adults and kids to fundraise at this Saturday’s November 20th Davis Senior Center Holiday Craft Fair at 646 A St. from 9am until 2pm. The masks have many new designs (see photos) and are 100% cotton with a soft tea-dyed muslin cotton liner. The kid’s masks come in two sizes, small for 3-5 year-olds, and medium for 5-12 year-olds, both of which are adjustable via 2 beads included on the elastic band.
These face masks make great gifts for the holidays, birthdays or other events and are easy (and inexpensive) to mail for long-distance gifts. For more information or to purchase masks before or after this Saturday’s sale, please contact Eileen at (530) 756-5165 or email her at emsamitz@dcn.org.
Children’s and Adult’s Mask Patterns: (Note: only children’s masks have adjustable elastic) Small child’s masks (3-4 year old or small 5-year old) (top row) #17 Rainbow hearts and paws; #20 – Happy kitties; #23 – Happy dogs Medium child’s masks (5-12 year olds) (center row) #18 – Rainbow hearts and paws; #21 – Happy kitties; #24 – Happy dogs Adult masks (bottom row) #19 – hearts and paws; #22 – Happy kitties; #25 – Happy dogs
Yolo County SPCA now has masks for the entire family in our “Spring-has-Sprung” fundraiser for the Community Cat Kindness Fund. There are also some new fabric patterns! The children’s sizes come in 3 fabric designs have adjustable elastic (via beads) and come in a small size for a 3-4 year old (or a small 5 year old), or a medium child’s size for 5-12 year olds. We also have the matching adults’ sizes in these 3 newest fabrics (see photos). These masks make wonderful gifts as well, particularly if you need to mail a gift since they are so easy and inexpensive to mail.
#19 – Rainbow hearts and paws – adult (close-up)
We encourage ordering early for the best selection and since some of the original fabric designs are in limited supply. To cover its costs, we ask for a minimum donation of $15 per mask. These masks make great gifts and are easily mailed to gift recipients inexpensively. All of the masks have bendable nose bands and are made of quality materials, including the Cali Fabrics elastic and made with 100% cotton fabrics, including a very soft tea-dyed muslin for the inner fabric.
The City of Davis' only response to recent crashes in the vicinity of Pole Line Road and East Covell Blvd has thus far been Enforcement1. Actively, the Davis Police Department has been monitoring some locations in the area. Passively, the City has placed aradar speed sign on WB East Covell between Manzanita and Baywood Streets,right about here.
Why is the radar speed sign in the bike lane? The City places similar signs – and they and private contractors place various construction signs – off to the side on streets when there's space to do so, so they clearly understand the advantage of doing so. But when there's no space, they place the signs on the side of the street, and on most collectors and arterial streets in Davis this means it's in a bike lane.
"Putting a radar feedback sign on Covell to invite drivers to slow down: good. Putting a sign in bike lane: not good," says Nicolas Fauchier-Magnan, the President ofBike Davis, who usually goes by Nico.
"Obstructing the bike lane, on a street where drivers routinely go 50 mph or more is simply irresponsible.
"Come on, City of Davis," continues Nico. "You should know better, and you can do better. Please fix this terrible blunder before someone gets hurt. There is plenty of space on the grass, outside of the bike lane, to safely place this sign."
As candidates run to retain their elected positions they will tout issues they’ve supported to win citizen’s votes. There will be advertisements, slogans and even face mask images that imply the candidate supports certain issues. Lest there be any confusion about what the City of Davis has done for burrowing owls, I’ll recount a few “lowlights” of the city’s inaction and neglect of burrowing owls over my 20 years advocating for the owls.
In 2000 several natal burrows were disked at Mace Ranch housing development (Flatlander and Yolano Flame). The city did not pursue legal action against the developer for disking owlets into the ground.
The city, as the CEQA lead agency, was required to mitigate the destruction of the Mace Ranch owl colony. Mitigation was secured at Grasslands Park. A Burrowing Owl Reserve of 60 acres was established. In 2004, a Burrowing Owl Habitat Management plan (a legal requirement under CEQA) was developed that required the vegetation not exceed 4 to 5 inches, year round. The city never kept the vegetation within that standard height. (Sustain Environmental. Documents provided on request. ) Pam Nieberg and I contacted city council members, the Natural Resource Specialist and the Open Space and Habitat Commission. The city did not comply with the Habitat Management Plan. Pam and I met with then City Manager, Dirk Brazil. He told us if there was no money for vegetation management, it would not happen. When the consultant, Sustain Environmental, consistently found the vegetation height not in compliance with the Habitat Management Plan, the city ended the consultant’s contract. No more breeding burrowing owls at the Reserve or Grasslands itself.
A few days ago I learned of a new policy from City staff concerning the 25 acres outside of Mace curve, aka Mace 25, prime farmland that was purchased with citizen tax dollars from the open space fund. According to this new policy, the City will not be mowing areas in which burrowing owls are already nesting, instead allowing the owls to be “naturally displaced from the site… by allowing tall dense vegetation to grow along the western edge.” By not mowing, the City will be “doing what it can to prevent the owls from using the site.” Burrowing owls prefer short grasses (e.g., native short prairie grass or grass that is kept short through mowing) so that they can see their predators coming, and they will leave an area if the grasses aren’t short.
At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, I along with a number of other citizens attended to protest this new policy and to ask the City Council to direct staff to promote burrowing owl habitat at that site. Burrowing owls, it should be noted, have been designated as a Species of Special Concern by the State of California, and their numbers have been declining dramatically over the past 10 years in the Davis area. No action was taken at the meeting, although I have since learned that at least one Councilmember is in favor of taking up this issue at a future meeting.
What did happen at the meeting was that Assistant City Manager Ash Feeney defended the new policy. He has apparently issued a statement summarizing his views, published on the Davis Vanguard (staff could not confirm this by the end of yesterday’s business day). Unfortunately, this response contains false and problematic statements.
Like so many people in Davis, I am an avid animal lover. I worked at UCD VMTH until I retired 5 years ago. I loved my work there and was privileged to help many animals during that time, but since retiring, I decided to volunteer with the local Yolo County SPCA which has helped backfill some of the gratification I got from my work. I also have coordinated the holiday pet basket charity annually for Mercer Clinic for the Pets of the Homeless for 25 years, but now one of my biggest concerns is the need for a new Yolo County animal shelter.
The good news is that there is a path now open to get there now thanks to the work of a number of people working with Supervisor Jim Provenza who serves with Supervisor Gary Sandy on the County committee working making a new animal shelter a reality. The first thing needed is the Joint Powers Agreement (JPA) which a number of entities have worked on to draft including Jim, Supervisor Gary Sandy, UCD’s Koret Animal Shelter program and the Yolo County SPCA.
This Joint Powers agreement which would change the structure of management for a Yolo Animal Shelter to be a shared responsibility, with shared input. This has been needed and the good news is that this JPA moved forward this past Tuesday at the Board of Supervisors meeting. The motion was led by Jim Provenza which, with his impassioned statement, passed unanimously by the entire Board of Supervisors. Jim has cared about this need deeply and even has a video posted making the appeal for a new Yolo animal shelter needed which you can view here:
I was present at the Board of Supervisors February 25hth meeting with several other animal lovers and advocates who testified and we were thrilled to see how Jim spoke so passionately about the need for this JPA to move forward and to help us to move forward on efforts for a new animal shelter. A non-profit was started a while ago thanks to a number of dedicated animals lovers called “Unleashing Yolo” to help fundraise for a new Yolo animal shelter. To learn more about it and to help by donating, the website is www.unleashingyolo.org
In addition, there is another non-profit supporting this goal named “Friends of Yolo County Animal Services” which has a website at www.friendsofycas.org and are dedicated to helping improve the lives of animals and support adoption within Yolo County.
In short, I wanted to share this wonderful news, and to reach out to others who may want to help in this much needed effort and also, to urge people to please vote For Jim Provenza to be re-elected for Yolo County Supervisor, so we can move forward to make a new animal shelter a reality.
Last chance to get a pet costume from fundraising effort by Mercer Clinic for the Pets of the Homeless at this Saturday’s Farmer’s Market, Oct. 26th
There will be a Halloween themed fundraising effort for donations to be held at Farmer's Market this Saturday, Oct. 26th by Mercer Clinic for the Pets of the Homeless. They will have a variety of dog Halloween costumes along with toys for cats and dogs. For more information on Mercer Clinic see our website at mercerclinic.org or call (530) 756-5165.
Please contact the City Council, City Manager, City Wildlife Resource Specialist and whomever else you wish regarding the city tree pruning that is going on right now. Someone in the city contracted for the pruning of city trees now, in the middle of nesting season for virtually every bird species, including the legally protected Swainsons Hawk. Who in their right mind would do that?
When I received a notice of the pruning, I contacted the city to ask that it stop, giving the reasons stated above. Unfortunately, a number of the city trees in my neighborhood, including a number of Canary Island Pines which Swainson's hawks love, were heavily pruned despite efforts to prevent it.
Normally, this time of year, I hear the Swainson's hawks vocalizing all over the neighborhood, every day, all day. Yesterday and today after the pruning–complete silence.
On June 13, 2013, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) proposed removing the gray wolf, Canis lupus, from the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife. At that time, I wrote an article and submitted an official comment, arguing that the 2013 Proposed Rule was capricious, arbitrary, and inconsistent.
Now, almost six years later, the FWS proposes to “delist” Canis lupus again. However, the logic underlying the 2019 Proposed Rule is no better than the logic underlying 2013 Proposed Rule. Comparing the two a bit, focusing on the wolves in the Pacific Northwest (western Washington and western Oregon) and California, will make that evident.
One of the benefits of living in Davis is having a world-class veterinary research center right down the road, one that produces research like the work highlighted in the article “Dogs Fed Some Popular Diets Could Be at Risk of Heart Disease.” Yet the more that I learn about this research, the more I realize how resistant people are to the message.
The rough idea is this: researchers have found a relatively recent increase in the number of dogs diagnosed with Taurine-Deficient Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM). DCM is a disease of the heart muscle that leads to reduced heart pumping function and increased heart size, and it can result in severe consequences such as congestive heart failure or sudden cardiac death. Researchers are still trying to isolate the exact cause, but it has been associated with grain-free diets, raw diets, and foods that contain exotic ingredients like peas and lentils. It is not yet known why these foods would lead to low taurine and DCM, but adding taurine (an amino acid) to the dog’s diet does not seem to help. (More details here).
So, the cautious approach would seem to be to avoid feeding dogs these boutique and grain-free foods until researchers figure things out further. What should dogs eat, then? A Facebook group which is facilitating the gathering of data and exchange of information among researchers is currently recommending Purina Pro Plan, Hills Science Diet, Royal Canin, Eukanuba, and Iams.
Davisite 