You also wrote “This was just a dumb idea, and it’s not surprising that it came back to bite them.”

That was extremely RUDE and out of line to write that. Do you often donate your time or money to special contributions? Apparently not.. I am sure the person that painted this spend countless hours perfecting this for a good cause.

I guarantee you if you take a vote, as did KGW news which took an online poll. The results were “ridiculous” about the pulling of the fire hydrant. Why don’t the dog owners themselves take some ownership and make sure they know where their dogs are peeing? If they want to out of respect for the flag, make sure you know where your dog is relieving itself.

Nevertheless, the resolution has come. It is now guarded by a 3 foot black iron rod fence to satisfy the people out there that have nothing else to do but BIT** about things! Get a life and get over it!

It won’t happen again.

But, at the same time, there’s this comparatively small matter of the flag-painted fire hydrant in the dog park, which many people in that area find to be bad symbolism, which five minutes’ thought would have told the park planners would strike many people as bad symbolism, and there’s some uproar over that–a totally local uproar for a totally local issue, getting some non-local attention only because Itchmo picked it up. Shocking! But you know what? Not only does it not mean that all those people nationally who complained abou the pet food don’t really care about the safety of their pets’ food; it doesn’t even mean that the peple in that area, who are complaining about the fire hydrant don’t care about the safety of their pets’ food. It just means they object to that paricular symbolism, which really truly does not seem to me to be particularly respectful of either the hero dog, or the flag.

“There are more important things to worry about” can be used to disparage almost any public complaint, and it’s nearly always true. Name any other concern you like, and I can trump it by pointing out that, if we don’t do something about the problem of Earth-orbit-crossing asteroids and comets, we may not be here in a year or two to worry about your “lesser” concern. That doesn’t make it a valid, or even especially honest, criticism.

The situation of toxins in our & our pets’ food, consumer products, packaging, and outdated/inaccurate/incompetent testing methods, and corruption on just about every level,… that’s what’s worthy of a public uproar. That’s more of a disgrace to the flag and to America and even to the memory of the police dog, in my opinion, than dogs doing their business on a flag-inspired hydrant.

Seems to me a hydrant is just asking for people to urge their dogs to pee on it, aside from a dog’s regular urge to pee on just about anything upright. Those ‘deterrent’ kind of bushes never worked on my small dog, who’d just climb right over and crap on top of them.

It does look like it’s a tombstone…as it’s sitting up on a cement block — perhaps if they also included a plaque in front of it, it wouldn’t have offended so many.

Well, whatever.

But if there is any kind of ‘main entrance’ to the dog area, we think putting the hydrant sculpture somewhere by that entrance would be a reasonable alternative. That way, fans and friends of Hondo would be able to see his memorial when they visit.

Just a thought.

in MY opinion, the firehydrant IS a symbol of a dog…as Im sure this police dog was probably a frequent to many firehydrants and is probably why that was chosen to represent…

Since the intent was simply to honor the police dog, and not to make some sort of weird political statement, they’d have been better advised from the beginning to paint something else like a flag. Why did they choose the fire hydrant, anyway? That would make sense if he were a fire house dog, but he wasn’t; he was a police dog. Why not a a red, white, and blue representation of a police car?

This was just a dumb idea, and it’s not surprising that it came back to bite them.

ok, and burning the American Flag is OK???? I’d rather see a dog pee on this than see someone within the US burning our flag…