New leash on life

Apr 25

When Ann Suddarth adopted her dog Zoe from the SPCA last summer, she had no idea the trial she was in for. “She’s the most difficult dog I’ve ever had,” Suddarth says of the 50-pound mixed breed who’s now 18 months old. “Since she’d been at the SPCA for a long time before I brought her home,” Suddarth explains, “she suffered from terrible separation anxiety.”

Confessions of a law-abiding dog owner
I’ll admit it: when the city passed a leash law, I was as frustrated as all the other dog owners who’d enjoyed regular off-leash walks or runs down the Rivanna Greenbelt. Taking a well-behaved but hydrophilic Labrador Retriever for a leashed walk along a beautiful body of water seems crueler than just leaving her at home to play in the yard. Since I work full time and have a two-year-old who goes to bed by 7:30pm, I haven’t gone back to Riverview since the leash law took effect. Just call me one of the leash law casualties.
Farewell to furry friends
The idea struck Melba Atkinson in 1998, when it came time to euthanize her 15-year-old Yellow Lab, Daisy. “It was our second pet to die in a year, and we had three more that were coming along,” Atkinson remembers. Struggling with the losses of her beloved companions, Atkinson decided to found the Charlottesville Pet Loss Support Group, and now, four years later, the group continues to meet twice a month, on the first and third Monday from 7 to 8:30pm in the Real Estate III building on 29N across from Wal-Mart.

New leash on life: Dog walkers learn to live with the law

PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO The issue was almost too hot for local authorities to handle, pitting neighbor against neighbor and drawing throngs of angry citizens to City Council meetings. What had people so fired up? Taxes? Pollution of our drinking water? Cuts in education? Nope.

Snack attack
Local dogs have never had it so good when it comes to dining. Sammy Snacks, a natural pet food and biscuit company run by Pamela Peterson since 1999, operates right here in town in a six-month-old retail spot on Carleton Road, though the products are also available in nearly 20 locations up and down the East Coast. Best of all, Sammy Snacks’ treats, which have gourmet names such as Garlic Cheese, CranOat, Carob Chip, and Virginia Barbeque, can be eaten by puppies, adult dogs and… people!

4Better Or Worse

The week in review
Best emotion-packed meeting of the Board of Architectural Review: Swayed by the impassioned pleas from First Baptist Church members who want to partially demolish the Rufus...

The Dish

Fishy business on 29N
WINA broke the smelly story last week: apparently, when the Chiang House burned down back in March, some kind of meat product remained to decompose. It wasn’t long, accor...

Essays

Five dogs old: saying goodbye to April
I measure my life by dog lives. I am four dogs old. April is my fifth. Lately, April has developed a new habit: puking on rugs. She never pukes on the indestructible vinyl ...

Real Estate - On the Block

Literally hand-crafted
Driving down 29 South, one has a hard time imagining that it’s the same road that grinds through all the clutter from Ruckersville into Charlottesville. Rolling hills pre...

Movie Reviews

Rush to Crush?
If they ever make a feature film of Sex and the City it will be too little, too late. The subject of sexually active women who travel in packs will have been done to death ...

Music Reviews

Mixmaster Mike, The Arsonists, Zion I
Mixmaster Mike, The Arsonists, Zion IStarr Hill Music Hall, Thursday, April 18 By Damani Harrison

News

Black dissent
Usually communities don’t rally around teens charged with felonious assaults. Usually when people raise money after crimes or disasters, it’s to help the victims–...
Cost of recycling
Charlottesville has this in common with New York, Baltimore, and Charleston, West Virginia: All are considering dumping at least part, if not all, of their recycling progra...
Woolen Mills stinks
Here’s a realtor’s listing you won’t see: charming, historic house on Rivanna River with easy access to sewage pumping station. Hold your nose when you make an offer ...

Strange But True

Rigid reasoning
Q: It's 11pm, somebody's pounding at the door. Turns out to be a rich old gent in a Rolls Royce, involved in a scavenger hunt against his ex-wife, and he says he'll pay $10...

Letters

Don't depict Winn and Scatena homes
[To Free Union resident Richard Davis about his letter in the April 11 edition of The Hook]:Why would you write a letter to the editor regarding a book that you had not tak...
Wake up, American radio listeners
I was fascinated by your analysis of the radio situation in Charlottesville. [April 11: "Spinning trouble: Clear Channel gets spanked by the FCC"] This story is a clarion c...

Cultural preview

A day at the races
Twice a year, in the spring and fall, all eyes in Albemarle County turn toward Foxfield. Whether you opt for staying at home and avoiding the mad rush to the races or you p...
Making tracks
Once when my kids were little, we decided to take a trip to visit grandparents in Florida. Instead of flying or driving, though, we took the train so the boys could experie...
Places to go
Elizabeth Schoyer calls her latest exhibit “Dictionary of Imaginary Places,” though “dictionary” doesn’t quite describe what Schoyer’s up to here. The artist se...
Reason to rock
By Mark Grabowski
Staying alive
The Doors put it best in their song “Riders on the Storm”: “There's a killer on the road... If you give this man a ride, sweet memory will die.” A killer is on the ...
Tense Cat
“I'm trying to catch the true quality of experience in a group of people, that cloudy, flickering, evanescent, fiercely charged interplay of live human beings in the thun...
Very special artists
The therapeutic value of art is well-known. Such artists as Williamstown, Massachusetts resident Jessy Park, a painter who is austic; photorealist painter Chuck Close, para...