Page 8A
OFF PAGE ONE
East Oregonian
Thursday, October 1, 2015
Pendleton man is leader of the pack SALES: Will be
tax-free until Jan.
By KATHY ANEY
East Oregonian
Steve Hart swears he is not a dog
whisperer. Evidence, however, is to the
contrary.
Each morning, the Pendleton man
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in Community Park. The dogs travel in
a pack led by Hart. When they come
across another park user, Hart waves his
brood off the path where the dogs wait
until the way is clear. Sometimes people
approach and scratch the dogs behind
the ears or pat them on their glossy
heads.
Sometime during each walk, Hart
usually directs the affable Labs onto a
park bench. They obligingly hop up,
always in the same order, with a yellow
at each end, the black in the middle and
the chocolates in between.
“They are always color coordinated,”
he said during a recent outing.
Hart can leave the quintet of canines,
walk out of sight and know they will
stay there until he returns or gives them
the signal to come. Often, he strolls to
his home at the edge of the park where
he whistles. They come running.
This canine harmony persists even at
home.
“My yard isn’t fenced,” he said.
“They never leave.”
Meet Blondie and Sunshine, both 11,
and Brown, Cocoa and Belle, 4 — all
females. Two of the dogs, Sunshine and
Belle, belong to his grown daughter,
Tara Hart, and one, Blondie, goes back
and forth between houses. Steve cares
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Hart rarely speaks to the dogs. If he
feels the need to correct one of them, “I
growl,” he said.
He gave a soft growl to illustrate and
looked a tad embarrassed. It works, he
said.
With all this kumbaya between Hart
and the dogs, one might think he spends
hours training and conditioning them
from puppyhood. They would be wrong.
Hart said his family’s pooches grow
up pack-style, learning all they need to
know from the adult dogs.
“These are dogs trained by dogs that
have been trained by dogs,” he said.
Oregon also has a robust
supply of marijuana that’s
just after midnight to get a grown to support medical
head start on sales.
marijuana users and for the
One store is offering a black market. Companies
goody bag with T-shirts, but have invested in massive
no free marijuana. Another warehouses in Portland to
will have a live band and grow the drug indoors, and
10 percent discounts. The southern Oregon has some
marijuana review site of the nation’s best condi-
/HDÀ\ZLOOVHWXSZLWKIRRG tions for outdoor cultivation
trucks at a handful of stores, of marijuana.
giving away free meals to
Growers don’t face
anyone who promotes the strict regulations yet, so
service on social media.
the supply can more easily
Several stores have ÀRZ LQWR UHWDLO VWRUHV WKDQ
erected billboards in Port- it did in Washington and
land. A shop in Merlin is Colorado.
advertising on the radio.
Still, there’s concern.
Shoppers have one Summer has historically
more incentive to buy early been a time of marijuana
and often: Under Oregon shortages in Oregon, and
law, pot purchases will be most of the outdoor crop
tax-free until January — a isn’t ready to harvest. Indoor
savings of up to 20 percent. growers have had minimal
Under the state law time to ramp up production,
approved last year by since lawmakers only
voters, possession of mari- approved the Oct. 1 start
juana in limited quantities date three months ago.
has been permitted since
“I think there’s going
July 1. But there’s been no to be a lack of supply
legal way to buy it.
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In Washington and Shane McKee, co-founder
Colorado, which preceded of
Shango
Premium
Oregon in allowing legal Cannabis, which has three
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of sales brought massive that will open at midnight.
crowds, severe shortages He expects recreational
and high prices.
customers to demand
More than 250 medical indoor-grown marijuana,
marijuana dispensaries in which can be tightly
Oregon have told the state controlled to maximize the
they’ll sell to recreational KLJKDQGWKHÀDYRU
customers. By contrast,
“There’s a lot of highly
Colorado had 24 stores on educated buyers here who
Day 1. Washington had just have been spoiled with
four, and a year later, still high-grade cannabis for
has fewer than Oregon.
years,” McKee said.
Continued from 1A
Staff photo by Kathy Aney
Sunshine, Brown, Belle, Cocoa and Blondie sit patiently at Community
Park on Tuesday morning waiting for Steve Hart to signal them to hop
down. Hart doesn’t need leashes or a raised voice to control the Labrador
retrievers.
“We don’t house train them. We don’t
have to break them not to get into the
garbage.”
The “we” refers to Steve and his
wife, Sonja, director of the Eastern
Oregon Alcoholism Foundation. When
one of the dogs gives birth, the Harts
wait eight months before giving them
away to another family.
“By six to eight months, a puppy is
pretty well trained,” he said.
One of the Labs, Cocoa, has a little
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out how to open the sunroom door
and let all the dogs into the back yard
where McKay Creek bubbles by. The
coffee-colored canine jumps up, braces
herself with one paw and clamps down
on the round metal doorknob with her
teeth, turns it and pulls the door open,
Hart said, as the other dogs watch.
“She takes them all out to swim in
the creek,” he said.
Obviously, Hart’s breed of choice is
the Labrador. During the Harts’ 42-year
marriage, “we’ve always had a Lab
around.” Hart also hunts ducks and
upland game. His dogs respond to both
hand signals and whistles.
From puppyhood, the dogs’ person-
alities gradually emerge. Cocoa is the
hunter. Brown, the runt of her litter, is
timid. Sunshine is the lover. She and
Blondie often endearingly pose like
Koala bears reaching for eucalyptus.
The Harts feed the pack canned food
mixed with kibble once a day, after the
couple has eaten. They observe pack
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Blondie, then Brown, then Cocoa. At
his daughter’s house, Blondie goes to
the bottom of the order after Sunshine
and Belle.
The two packs merge each day into
one. As you might expect, Hart’s gang
of pooches attract attention. He grants
plenty of requests for photos, though the
camera-shy, retired construction worker
refuses to pose in any of them.
On this day, he smiled happily at his
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grass. The temperature hovered around
70 degrees, under a bright sun. Life was
good.
Hart motioned for the dogs to stay
and sauntered the about 60 yards to his
house. The Labs watched Hart’s every
movement. The man turned, paused a
beat and whistled. They ran to Hart as if
shot from a cannon.
Not a dog whisperer?
Hmmmm.
ONION: Umatilla is only AgSource lab that tests pungency
Continued from 1A
The color is then measured as a wavelength of
light using a small electronic device known as a
spectrophotometer.
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calculation to come up with a number somewhere
between 0-8. The lower the number, the less
pungent the onion. The less pungent the onion, the
more money a grower can potentially make off the
crop.
“They get pretty ecstatic when it’s between a 1
and 4,” Payton said.
A different test, known as a Brix test, measures
the sugar content of onions and can be done in
seconds, as opposed to hours. Payton places a small
amount of onion juice on a Brix reader, which
resembles a long kaleidescope, to come up with the
reading.
Occasionally farmers disagree with the results
of the test. That doesn’t come as a surprise to Craig
Simson, business agronomy manager at AgSource,
who has seen how competitive onion growers can
be.
“We had one fairly large client stay here all day
and watch us from beginning to end,” Simson said.
“This pungency is a very personal thing to an onion
grower.”
AgSource is a large farmer-owned cooperative
with seven labs nationwide, primarily in the
Midwest. Umatilla is the co-op’s western-most
location, and the only lab that does onion pungency
testing. Most samples come from around the
Columbia and Walla Walla basins, Simson said, but
sometimes are sent in from out of the region.
The test is used mostly for marketing, but can
also be used in a variety of ways, Simson said.
“By testing at the end of the year, they can
compare their secrets and growing techniques to the
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is high sugar and low pyruvic acid ... People don’t
want something that makes you cry and burn.”
———
Contact George Plaven at gplaven@eastorego-
nian.com or 541-966-0825.
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Lab technician Debbie Payton pours a ground onion into a fil-
ter to remove the pulp for sampling Thursday at AgSource
Laboratories in Umatilla.
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Lab technician Debbie Payton loads a sample into a refractom-
eter to perform a Brix reading, or sugar content, of an onion
sample Thursday at AgSource Laboratories in Umatilla.
STAIRS: Replacement would utilize steel stairs
Kerns said that eval- staircase, which would
uations of the city’s stair use steel stairs instead of
&RUEHWW LV RXW RI WKH RI¿FH system cleared further concrete ones, but it’s too
said signs have been placed liability concerns because late in construction season
by the top of the 13th Street it proved that the city isn’t to build it this year.
stairs that redirect children negligent.
Patterson said city staff
to access the bus stop at the
Public Works Director could seek out grants in
Pendleton Early Learning Bob Patterson said the city the meantime to fund the
Center via the stairs at would look into adding project and would discuss it
Southwest 10th Street.
more treads to the stairs that further with the city council
But the other public are repairable, but replacing at its next work session Oct.
stairs in Pendleton, like the the 13th Street set will be a 13.
ones on 10th Street, South- much tougher task.
———
west Seventh Street and
City
engineers
are
Contact Antonio Sierra
Southwest Isaac Avenue, currently working on a at asierra@eastoregonian.
aren’t in good condition design for a replacement com or 541-966-0836.
either.
Walking up or down
those stairs, it’s not
uncommon to come across
THURSDAY, OCT. 1
large chunks missing from
steps, creating an uneven
surface for pedestrians. City
RI¿FLDOV WKDW HYDOXDWHG WKH
at
city’s other staircases after
the 13th Street incident
8:30-11:00p
concluded that those stairs
were in need of improve-
8 S.E. COURT, PENDLETON
ment, but not in need of
541.278.1100
closure.
Continued from 1A
Live
Music
Tylor &
The Train Robbers
MARIJUANA: Not able to
sell edibles and extracts yet
Continued from 1A
creating recreational pot
regulations, estimates sales
of marijuana will generate
$10.7 million in revenue for
the 2015-2017 biennium.
Measure 91 dictates 40
percent of that will go to
the state’s Common School
Fund, 20 percent to mental
health, alcoholism and drug
services, and 15 percent to
Oregon State Police. The
Oregon Health Authority
will get 5 percent for alcohol
and drug abuse prevention.
Cities and counties will
get 10 percent each for
enforcement, unless they
ban marijuana. Then they
get nothing.
Mark Pettinger with
the OLCC’s Recreational
Marijuana Program said the
opt out deadline is Dec. 27,
but local governments after
that date can rescind their
bans and opt in.
Purchases of marijuana
are tax free from Thursday
until Dec. 31, 2016, then
the tax jumps to 25 percent.
Pettinger explained the
Oregon Health Authority
is in charge of the medical
dispensaries, and the liquor
commission will license
retail pot stores starting
about a year from now.
Marijuana at medical stores
will have a 17 percent base
tax rate, but local govern-
ments can tack on an addi-
tional tax up to 3 percent.
For a while, then,
buyers will be able to get
recreational pot from OHA
dispensaries and OLCC
stores,
though
under
different tax rates.
Measure 91 has allowed
adults since July 1 to possess
up to an ounce of marijuana
on their person, 8 ounces
of usable pot in a residence
and a maximum of four
plants on a property. But
a medical dispensary will
sell only a quarter ounce of
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over the age of 21, as long
as the person can prove their
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Marijuana leaves, seeds and
plants also are for sale, but
Pettinger said marijuana
edibles and extracts are off
the table while the agency
writes the rules.
The liquor commission
aims to allow the sales of
edibles and extracts in the
second half of 2016, the
same time it plans to license
retail stores. Pettinger said
there will not be a limit
on how much marijuana a
person can buy from those
stores.
At the same time, he said,
the law limits how much pot
a person can carry or have
in their home. So while
someone would be able to
buy a couple pounds of pot,
they may need some friends
to help carry it home, then
enough homes to keep it all
in.
The OLCC’s focus is
on the seed-to-sale end of
things, Pettinger said, while
hangups with possession
will fall to the purview of
local law enforcement.
Attention Parents:
Don’t Miss the Bus!
Join us
Thursday, October 15
from 6-8 pm
at Pendleton Early
Learning Center
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www.readyforkindergarten.org
children adiness
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Questions? E-mail tcrfofpendleton@gmail.com
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