Our neighborhood paper, the Crescenta Valley Weekly, has a regular feature called Spiritually Speaking, edited by the warm and wise Rev. Beverly Craig, in which representatives from local religious organizations weigh in on ethical issues, kind of like Dear Abby but there may be pews and an altar involved.\
UUVerdugo hasn't been represented too often in the Weekly in recent years, but now we'll have an option once a month or so to dispense Unitarian Universalist-flavored advice to a grateful public.
Here's an exchange from the July 6, 2023 issue, and you can see the rest of the responses here.
Question: I’ll begin by saying I’m an animal lover. My husband died four years ago and the one thing that gives me peace is gardening. I have worked diligently at creating a beautiful front yard full of flowers that blossom all year long depending upon the season.
My problem is that folks walking their dogs often let them romp in my flower gardens and the result is I end up with dug up plants, which breaks my heart after all of the work I’ve put in. I even have two signs that read, “Please Stay Off the Flower Beds” but the signs have been ignored. Any suggestions?
~ Flower Lover
Dear Flower Lover,
First, I sympathize. In addition to your garden being a testament to your hard work, an outlet for self-expression and healing, a shot in the arm to your mental health and maybe (if you’re like me) the source of a single, triumphant strawberry, gardens reduce our carbon footprint and are a welcome and comforting sight in any neighborhood. A garden also happens to be your property and you should feel pride of workmanship in your achievement. So when someone’s pet causes a bustle in your hedgerow, it smarts.
Furthermore, we also see marauding pets as an extension of their owners. If you had a chicken coop, you’d build it in such a way that coyotes and other predators wouldn’t get in; you’d prune your palm trees in such a way that they’d be less susceptible to blight. But a dog tearing up your pea patch is clearly something that its owner has some control over, so why don’t they have some consideration for your hard work? It seems to me that keeping dogs out of the neighbor’s yard on their walks and cleaning up their waste is just a simple part of the social construct; as simple to understand as restricting the blowing off of holiday fireworks to professionals at set times.
But because, on my worst day, I can feel a little misanthropic, I won’t try to tell you that people just don’t know how special a garden is. On such days I would say that people know but don’t care, and perhaps only having a garden themselves would they feel the need to keep their pets away from yours. But, as the owner of an occasionally rambunctious dog in a residential area, I’ll say that I always try to keep him away from gardens. I am especially relieved when those gardens are in raised beds or behind low fences where he can’t get to them and only the birds, raccoons and coyotes can.
One of the Unitarian Universalist principles is an understanding of the interdependent web all living things share, but some people come to that understanding in their own time. In the meantime, to paraphrase Robert Frost, “Good fences make good dogs.”
