Cheers and Best Wishes for 2021

SFDOG wishes cheerful holidays and a happy (and better!) new year to you and your pups. Despite the challenges of 2020, we have things to celebrate together.

While we had to cancel many of our signature events, like the citywide Scoop de Doo park cleanup due to COVID-19 restrictions, we had success ramping up a pet food pantry in the Mission District and beating back the Golden Gate National Recreation Area’s attempt to, once again, cut recreational dog walking access.

Helping Families Feed Their Pets

San Francisco pet guardians are facing unprecedented hardships due to COVID-19, and the Latinx community in the Mission has been disproportionately affected. SFDOG has been working with the San Francisco SPCA and the Latino Task Force distributing dog and cat food at the Mission Food Hub, which provides groceries to more than 5,000 families a week. Our goal has been to reduce the number of pets who become homeless or relinquished to shelters due to the impact of COVID-19. Since August we have distributed 10 tons of pet food, helping hundreds of families who need a hand to feed their pets.

Thank you to everyone who has donated and volunteered to keep the pet food pantry going strong. SFDOG purchases half of the food at a steep discount through a distributor and the other half is provided by the SPCA through a corporate partnership with Purina.

Dog Groups Thwart GGNRA’s Attempt to Cut Recreational Dog Walking — Again

There is nothing more disheartening than to keep fighting the Golden Gate National Recreational Area’s continued attempts to drastically cut recreational dog walking access after all our community has been through. Yet here we are again following the GGNRA’s underhanded plan to sneak through elements of the failed and terminated dog management plan through the Superintendent’s compendium process that began a year ago. One of the most disturbing aspects of the compendium was the Chief Ranger’s change in dog walking definitions that would allow rangers to impound dogs deemed “unmanaged.”

Thankfully, we succeeded once again in our effort to protect recreational dog walking. We appreciate everyone who wrote the GGNRA in opposition to the compendium and want to give special thanks to Coastside Dog Owners Group of San Mateo County, Marin County Dog, Save Our Recreation, and our attorneys Chris Carr and Navi Dhillion (now at Paul Hastings LLP) who filed lawsuits to stop the GGNRA compendium. We were able to withdraw one of the lawsuits after the GGNRA removed most of the dog walking restrictions from the compendium in July. However, we are proceeding with litigation due to GGNRA’s failure to comply with the Freedom of Information Act—again.

Happy Holidays

We want to express our deep gratitude to our SFDOG members, volunteers, donors, and dog walking community for all of your support throughout the year. Wishing you all good health, joy, love, and peace this holiday season. 

SFDOG