Huckleberries: ‘Dog friendly’ rating may be hasty, but CdA’s heavenly

Blogger Ohmidog was surprised when Dog Fancy named Coeur d’Alene America’s most dog-friendly town recently. So was your Huckleberry Hound. After all, the dog park at Lake City isn’t that old, and there doesn’t seem to be much else that distinguishes it from other Dog Towns – other than leash laws being ignored on Tubbs Hill. Previously, Ohmidog had criticized another organization, Petside.com, for dubbing Dallas second most dog-friendly after it had bestowed the key to the city on Michael Vick, the NFL QB who went to prison for dog abuse. In this instance, Ohmidog notes that Santa Cruz, Calif., which is in the Dog Fancy Top 5, lifted a 33-year ban on dogs downtown only recently. Also, Ohmidog questioned why Dog Fancy Editor Ernie Stone quoted Barbara Walters in his announcement that Coeur d’Alene is “a little slice of heaven.” What does that have to do with anything? asks Ohmidog. Coeur d’Alene is heavenly. Of course. And it’s nice when others notice, four-legged or otherwise.

Little trouper

D.J. And Dave Nall, former Hauser resort owners now living in Coeur d’Alene, had their hands full with five grandchildren at the North Idaho Fair on Wednesday. The heat got to one. So Dave took him home. The rest hung in there with D.J. until 9 p.m., including the youngest, whom D.J. learned later had vomited four times between carnival rides without crying uncle. D.J. admired the girl’s spunk. But she still drove home with the windows down because, as D.J. put it, her grandbaby was “stinking up the place.”

Huckleberries

All that weight loss – 58 percent of his former self – came in handy for former Kootenai County Clerk Dan English when he locked his keys in his Mazda pickup at the Coeur d’Alene Lowe’s on Thursday. Dan squeezed through the 10-by-13-inch slider window in back of the cab, surmising he couldn’t have done so if he’d lost only 50 percent of his weight. Quoth Dan: “Every vote or percentage of body weight lost counts!” … It’s hard to beat the excuse given to police by three women, including a 20-year-old, for drinking in a parked car in downtown Coeur d’Alene. According to the latest Downtown Coeur d’Alene Bar Report, the trio were “trying to save money by not paying bar drink costs” … On the police scanner Thursday, Coeur d’Alene police were dispatched to Fort Sherman Square (Fourth and Sherman) to locate a woman, two shirtless kids, and a baby in a stroller who were suspected of shoplifting. Seems the woman allegedly stuffed candy from a downtown store into the stroller. Which might provide a clue to the adjective the victim used to describe her: overweight … Huckleberries Online poll: 76 percent to 10 percent, readers voted that Jeremy Hill, of Bonners Ferry, acted responsibly when he shot one of three grizzlies that wandered into his yard with his kids present.

Parting shot

In lecturing Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry about economics, conservative commentator Ben Stein of CBS News bragged that he was going to leave Perry alone “for this month and just spend it on my boat up at Lake Pendoreille (sic) in North Idaho, a mountain lake where ospreys soar and where I feel at peace.” Huckleberries’d like to think that the misspelling of Lake Pend Oreille was an editor’s error rather than one made by Stein (boring economics instructor in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”). Stein, after all, has spent many vacations in the Sandpoint area.