FiPS Cares: Let's Find This Foster Dog A Home!

Are you in the market for a canine companion? Someone to catch a tennis ball in the park, or tell you that your mother was wrong when she said that you can't pull off those new bangs?

Meet Olive. She's 4 year-old female from Social Tees Animal Rescue, currently staying with my husband and I in Park Slope and looking for her forever home. She's a petite young lady - about 10 lbs - with a glossy black coat and a single adorable white paw. Right now she's sharing a space with 2 cats and 1 dog and getting along with everyone quite nicely. Olive is a super chill, low-maintenance cuddlebug who will gladly curl up with you on the couch and watch bad reality TV, go for a nice stroll around the neighborhood, or gossip with the other pooches while you enjoy a pint at your nearest dog-friendly neighborhood bar. She's had all her shots and would be super jazzed to meet you. Email Erin at ebradley@book.com to arrange a meetup or contact Dimitra at Social Tees at dimitra.socialtees@gmail.com.

A dog willing -- nay, happy -- to watch an entire season of The Bachelor with you? What a find.

FiPS Readers Weigh In: What Can We Do About Dog Abusers?

Photo via Flickr user AlexandrosDA few days back, a FiPS reader emailed us with a harrowing account of a man who was beating his dog on Union Street. She called the police, who showed up 20 minutes later and missed the whole ordeal. She urged the ASPCA to obtain local surveillance footage, but they didn't want to pursue the situation.

If you're reading this and have any ideas on how to help out (let's keep it legal, people), please drop a comment in the box.

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Local Resident Wants to Form Dog Run Committee

Photo via Pugslope

Before I sent my dog Lou off to live with ma dukes in suburbia, I took her to J.J. Byrne Park a few times. It was here that she enjoyed running in circles and lazily chewing on woodchips. This was years back, and I found it to be a perfectly adequate place for her to play with other dogs. I had nary an issue.

FiPS writer Jacqui recently wrote in with a gripe that she has with the park. For her, it's transformed from a dogrun to a place where children run wild through clouds of thick pot smoke. She wants to make a change.

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Dog Owners: Leaving a bag of poo on the sidewalk is not *technically* cleaning up after your pooch

This just in:

FiPS Reader: Here's a hot tip: a nice bag of poo on 6th Avenue & 12th Street. Someone in the neighborhood keeps taking their dog out for its evening glory and is courteous enough to bag it, but uncouth enough to leave it where it was ejected onto the sidewalk.

FiPS: Whoa. You mean this happens on like a nightly basis?

FiPS Reader: You bet. They do it with their daily Times subscription bag.

For shame, Park Slope dog owner.

For shame.

Who Gives a Shit: Separating Pooches in the dog run?

Big goes with big. Small goes with small. It’s an organizational principle we apply throughout life, whether we’re toddlers sorting wooden blocks or adults organizing our gun closets. It’s not just a spatial mandate, but a social one as well. Little leaguers don’t play against high school teams because no parent wants to see their five year-old get beamed by a teenager’s fastball. Oversized luggage goes to a separate area so your fellow travelers aren’t inconvenienced by your (most likely stupid) Burning Man project clogging the carousel.

Yet despite their rep as a law-abiding and mixed paper and plastic-recycling bunch, this “Rule of Size” is something a good number of Park Slopes ignore. Take the dog run near 4^th Avenue and 3^rd Street, for example. Like any given Project Runway finale, it is divided into two parts: a large dog run for large dogs and a small dog run (pay attention, this is where it gets murky) for their more diminutive brethren.

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