Friday, December 25, 2020 | Seaside Signal | SeasideSignal.com • A5
Three tips for keeping your dog cool, calm and in control
CANINE
CORNER
RAIN JORDAN
& DAHLIA
A friend of mine once was awak-
ened at 3 a.m. by an explosion in her
bedroom.
Two of her fi ve dogs were lip-
locked, and not in a good way. One
was latched onto the other’s face and
would not let go. When her husband
started yelling, it didn’t end the fi ght;
it led to the others joining in.
The biggest shock wasn’t the fi ght
itself, though certainly it must have
been a surprising way to be hustled
out of bed. The real surprise was that
the dog implanted into the face of the
other was the gentlest dog of their
crew. It seemed their little lovebug
had morphed into munitions.
Landmines work by being armed,
trip-wired, and buried just beneath a
surface, where they then lie silently in
wait. The inner workings of dogs are
not that simple, but a suffi ciently set
animal can be triggered to blow.
Sometimes it may be the result
of something relatively natural, like
tiny disputes between dogs over time.
Other times, however, it can be the
eventual result of training and han-
dling them in ways that suppress,
i.e., bury, rather than change their
feelings about things.
Here are some tips to help you
encourage your darling dog to stay
“lovebug.”
1: Instead of threatening, enrich.
After all, when is the last time a pass-
ing threat really worked on you? If
your boss threatens that she’ll down-
grade you from an offi ce to a cubi-
cle if you don’t stop sleeping at your
desk, is that going to make you any
less sleepy? It might make you fi nd
a way to hide your sleepiness, but
sleepiness itself won’t be changed
by the threat. Only addressing the
cause by, e.g., getting more or richer
sleep at night — perhaps by resolv-
ing whatever worry is keeping you
from good sleep — is likely to resolve
day-sleepiness.
When we threaten a dog to get
them to stop doing something we
don’t like, we might scare them into
the inaction we desire at that moment,
but it doesn’t change the underly-
ing feeling that led to the undesired
behavior, so the scare tactic isn’t a
permanent solution. Though each
dog may fi nd different things enrich-
ing, there are many forms of enrich-
ment for dogs in their daily lives:
Playing,
digging,
chewing,
yard-hunting, and exploration such
as sniff-mission walks, also known
as “sniffari” are just a few of many
possible options. An enriched dog
is a happier, less stressed dog, and a
happy dog’s behavior tends to exem-
plify that happiness.
2: Instead of nagging, invite. Any-
one who has ever been nagged knows
that the more it happens, the less effec-
tive it is, because you learn to tune
out the nagger. Anyone who has ever
been the nagger knows how annoy-
ing it is to be tuned out, and how the
nagger-naggee dynamic becomes an
exhausting vicious cycle. Oftentimes
we ignore a nagger because we think
we already know what is being said
or requested, and it’s nothing new or
worthwhile to us. It’s the same for
dogs. If the barking dog hears “Rover,
stop it” 20 times a day and knows
from experience that fulfi lling that
request will result in nothing but the
end of fun or attention, what’s in it for
them? On the other hand, if you invite
the dog to do something equally or
more exciting, nagging soon falls
away, and so does ignoring.
3: Instead of punishing, reward.
So, your boss catches you sleeping in
the offi ce again. This time she docks
your pay. Maybe she even throws a
pile of paperwork at you. That ticks
you off, but you want to keep your
job, so you just take it.
Because you are angry but have
suppressed your feelings, that anger
brews into long-lasting resentment,
frustration, and a sort of tripwire ten-
dency whenever anyone even men-
tions the boss or the situation. Now
what if instead, your boss were to
notice and reinforce the behavior
she desires — your staying awake
and working in your offi ce — every
single day? Perhaps she gives you a
daily big smile, thumbs up, and “atta-
boy” as she walks by.
Maybe after a month of noticing
that you’ve not slept in your offi ce at
all, she calls you in for a performance
review, tells you what a great job you
did on your recent project, and then
gives you a merit raise for increased
productivity.
The following month you get
more sleep at night so that you can
continue this positive streak at work
and save your work relationships.
When a dog is punished for unde-
sired behavior, whether by scolding,
leash jerking, or other corporeal pun-
ishment, the punishment may once
again stop the behavior temporarily,
via suppression. Since punishment
tends to scare or intimidate if not hurt,
most dogs will do what makes the
discomfort stop. However, suppress-
ing behavior does not solve it.
On the contrary, suppressed
behavior tends to rise back to the sur-
face eventually, exploding with even
more energy, sometimes in baffl ing
contexts or shocking ways.
This is why sticking with positive
reinforcement training is so import-
ant. Reinforcing desired behavior, by
responding with a paycheck of some-
thing that the dog really loves and
needs, will result in an increase in that
desired behavior. And voila! Through
rewarding the dog for good behav-
ior in this way, the desired behavior
becomes a replacement for the unde-
sired behavior you thought you had to
punish.
My friend will never know what
tripped the wire to her lovebug’s fi ght.
Perhaps the dog had been living in a
suppressed or agitated state in regard
to the other dog, who had been a bit of
a bully, however infrequently, over the
years. Since the tools our beloved pet
dogs are armed with aren’t thumbs,
but teeth, and since they do not have
the luxury of their preferred means of
confl ict avoidance — leaving when
they feel threatened — we need to
avoid loading them with potentially
explosive emotional material.
Santa: Toys for Tots one of three holiday programs put on by Rotary
Continued from Page A1
families.
“I can’t say enough about
Toys for Tots,” McDowall
said.
The project itself has
evolved somewhat over the
past couple decades. When
McDowall joined Rotary in
1997, it was a small event
organized by Tom and Gin-
ger Maltman but fi nancially
supported by another group.
“It kind of grew from
there,” McDowall said, add-
ing it was eventually put
entirely under the purview
of Seaside Rotary.
Although the program
is designed to support fam-
ilies experiencing need
Katherine Lacaze
Volunteer Jenny Knight, with the Seaside Rotary Club,
prepares to distribute toys to community families for the
organization’s Santa’s Workshop program.
during the holidays, there is
no vetting process based on
income restrictions. How-
ever, Rotary does enforce
that all participants show
proof of residing in either
Seaside or Gearhart, since
there are other similar pro-
grams run in other cities .
In light of the coronavi-
rus pandemic, McDowall
expected there would be a
bit more demand for Santa’s
Workshop this year than in
years past. She said they set
up for 20 extra families this
year. Last year, they served
85 families, or approxi-
mately 300 children.
Rotary also had to change
day-of procedures for health
and safety reasons this win-
ter. Normally, they let fami-
lies line up as they arrive and
walk through the toy area to
make their selections when
it’s their turn. This year,
they could only allow 20
parents in at a time. As peo-
ple arrived in the morning,
School: District continuing with distance learning
Continued from Page A1
Continued from Page A1
fund a compliance offi cer,
designed to inspect vacation
rentals and enforce local
codes related to items like
noise, litter and parking.
But while Barber and
council members applauded
his efforts, more than 100
vacation rental homeown-
ers were left cold. They say
their burden is way out of
proportion.
“If you take any other
business in the city of Sea-
side, they’re not being tar-
geted like we are,” Mike
Meyer, a co-organizer of the
100-member Seaside Vaca-
tion Rental Owners Asso-
ciation, said after the meet-
ing. “We’re an easy target,
an easy mark with no vot-
ing rights, and no voice. I
want to be part of the com-
munity, but I feel like I’m an
outsider and I’m not a part
of it.”
A single rental of his,
he said, contributed almost
$7,200 in lodging tax rev-
enue to the city in 2020
in addition to more than
$9,500 in property taxes and
the permit fee cost.
Property owner Dar-
ren Karr blasted the permit
increase in a letter to the
council this month.
Permit fee hike
Flory documented 51
vacation
rental
dwell-
ing complaints, with park-
ing being the biggest issue.
Twenty-two properties mar-
keting themselves as vaca-
tion rental properties had
not been granted conditional
use permits.
Local contacts, prop-
erty managers and property
owners are given an oppor-
tunity to respond to every
complaint on their vacation
rental, he said.
“I wanted to make sure
to document what their
responses were and what
they are doing to resolve
any neighborhood issues
that may result from the
operation of their VRD,”
Flory said.
Flory also tracked land
use applications for the
past fi ve years, compar-
ing numbers of vacation
DINING
on the
NORTH COAST
Great Restaurants in:
GEARHART • SEASIDE
CANNON BEACH
Oregon Department of Education
Data for Dec. 6 through 19. Clatsop County with just over 200
cases per 100,000 people and is among the districts required
to provide distance learning.
Rental: ‘A ridiculous nightmare that they have created’
“You’ve raised taxes,
changed rules, added rules,
and quintupled our business
fee without so much as one
single word being said to
us,” Karr wrote. “I’ve been
renting my house in Seaside
for 12 years and you guys
have never, not even once
reached out to me unless it
was with an open hand, and
a gun at my head.”
money to purchase presents
for themselves.
Finally, Rotary adopts 10
community families, based
on recommendations from
the Seaside School District,
and purchases gifts and food
for each of them. During the
week of Santa’s Workshop,
the organization was fi nish-
ing up its deliveries to this
year’s adopted families.
“My entire schedule this
week has been fi lled with
all Rotary activities,” vol-
unteer Leah Griffi th said
as she sorted through toys
at the convention center
before families arrived last
Wednesday. “It’s been a lot
of fun getting everything
ready.”
rental dwellings to total
applications. At their peak
in 2018, 56 transient lodg-
ing applications comprised
two-thirds of the applica-
tion. This year, 30 short-
term rental requests made
up about half of the total 58
land use applications.
Flory said he wants to
make a vacation rental con-
tact list as accessible as
possible to the public with
24-hour access for the pub-
lic via the city’s web page.
City Councilor Steve
Wright
joined
others
impressed by the results.
“We’ve had a lot of com-
plaints by a subset of the
vacation homeowners, and
hopefully by the end of
the night you’ll show them
what their money is going
for,” Wright said.
‘Under protest’
After the meeting, some
homeowners said the posi-
tion of code compliance
offi cer doesn’t justify even
being close to full time, if
at all.
Joe Foss, a co-organizer
of the vacation rental own-
ers association, said the
city hasn’t followed up on
their concerns since they
last went before the City
Council.
“It’s a ridiculous night-
mare that they have cre-
ated there and there is not
suffi cient
justifi cation,”
Foss said. “If you look at
the numbers he presented,
33% of them were basi-
cally unjustifi ed and another
30% of them we’re basically
already handled by the prop-
erty manager. So 60% of
those 51 didn’t even require
his input at all. And no, we
have not had additional con-
tact with the mayor or City
Council offi cials.”
Barber said fees will be
reviewed in coming months
after the city assesses
expenses.
“That’s still to be
reviewed and we’ll be doing
that,” he said.
In the meantime, prop-
erty owners say they will
continue to pay their permit
fees in a timely manner.
“Paying or not paying is
not really an option,” Meyer
said. “If you look at our bill,
it says anything paid after
Feb. 1 faces a 50% penalty.
Me, I don’t want to take a
chance on having to pay
another $275 on top of the
$550 business license fee on
three rentals.”
Foss also intends to pay
his 2021 permit fee. “I hav-
en’t yet, but I’m going to
I’ll put a note there: ‘Under
protest.’”
WANT TO KNOW WHERE THE LOCALS GO?
• Breakfast
• Lunch
• Dinner
• Junior Menu
RESTAURANT & LOUNGE
• Lighter appetite menu
E
RIL Y’
S
point, the leadership team —
comprised of Penrod, school
principals and administrative
staff — will review whether
the case count is declining and
“determine if we’re within
the range to move to a hybrid
model, or if we would need
to continue with comprehen-
sive distance learning,” Pen-
rod said.
If the county is within the
safe range, the district can
begin a two-week preparation
period to bring students back
on campus for learning.
The two-week preparation
is necessary for two reasons,
Penrod said. First, the district
has made an agreement with
the Seaside Education Asso-
ciation to give them adequate
time to transition. It allows all
departments to made arrange-
ments to safely and effectively
serve students in-person.
It also establishes a buf-
fer period. If the data changes
within the two-week period,
the leadership team has an
opportunity to adjust as
needed, Penrod said.
Taylor asked whether the
recent rollout of the COVID-
19 vaccine has any impact
on the state’s metrics for
reopening.
“It gives us hope, I think,”
Penrod said. “But no, it doesn’t
affect the metrics at this time.”
they were given an appoint-
ment, or time to return, later
in the day.
The program is just one
of three that Seaside Rotary
coordinates during the hol-
iday season. In addition to
Santa’s Workshop, the ser-
vice organization also does
Shop with a Cop and Adopt
a Family. For Shop with a
Cop, 15 school-aged chil-
dren are given the oppor-
tunity to do breakfast with
Seaside police offi cers and
Rotary volunteers. Then,
the participants are taken
to Fred Meyer and given
an opportunity to pick out
gifts for their families using
a gift card. During the shop-
ping trip, they also are given
BEST
BREAKFAST
IN TOWN!
Fish ‘n Chips • Burgers • Seafood & Steak
Friday & Saturday - Prime Rib
All Oregon Lottery products available
1104 S Holladay • 503-738-9701 • Open 9am-7pm, closed Tuesday
Traditional Mexican,
Seafood & Drinks
1445 S. Roosevelt Drive
Seaside • 503-738-9678
Cannon Beach
Chocolate Cafe
WE ARE OPEN!
End of Year Sale! While Supplies Last!
232 N. Spruce • Cannon Beach, Oregon
Open 10 am-5 pm Daily! • 503.436.4331
Call Sarah Silver
503.325.3211
ext 1222
YOUR RESTAURANT
AD HERE.
Find Your Next Regular
Customers!