Like citizens who live in small towns everywhere, we tend to agree on most of the really important issues such as growth and the environment. We tend to disagree, however, where our personal livelihoods or perceived way of life is affected by community decisions in these areas as expressed by our representatives in local government.

For example: Land developers, planners, architects, contractors, trades people, real estate people, yes, even newspaper publishers who court additional ad revenues, all those who benefit from building activities (growth), really do want to keep Malibu relatively small and rural, but not to the extent that their personal financial well-being is negatively impacted. They have a legitimate financial stake in community “growth”, after all, that is how they make their living, pay their bills, support the local business community, participate in the schools, pay their taxes, protect the environment … yes, protect the environment. Have you ever met a single person who lives in Malibu who did not favor protecting the environment?

However, those citizens not involved with “growth” businesses have a legitimate stake in the future direction of the community, as well. They moved here because they sought semi-rural living in a non-urban environment away from the peripatetic hustle and bustle of the city, to enjoy the peaceful serenity and safety of ocean/canyon living. Can you really blame them for wanting to keep the status quo that drew them here in the first place? They anxiously view each additional development as a permanent encroachment upon their idyllic existence, adding to the growing traffic congestion on PCH, and as an attack upon diminishing open spaces and the environment.

Not unexpectedly, both groups have polarized positions which tend to allow intelligent, reasonable people to unfairly brand the other group as “more concerned with tree frogs than people!” or, “trying to make Malibu into another Laguna Beach!”

Contentiousness is not the answer — careful, sober, hard-fought compromise is. There is a middle ground here where the legitimate concerns of all our citizens must be addressed and protected. That is the very difficult responsibility of our City Council and the commissions that report to them.

It is time to begin constructive consensus building so that we can become part of the solution for a new millennium.

Ray Singer

Nothing could be cuter than small kids exploring our world. Unfortunately, the reality is that there is little of it left to explore. All along our coastline, the tidepools are extremely degraded from excessive use by both teachers and their students, as well as tourists. This is why the front page photos of Children’s Creative Workshop kids visiting the precious tidepools is of concern, especially the one of the boy with the plastic bag. I sure hope he wasn’t “collecting” precious creatures. Certainly sitting in the tidepool and walking in it (even with tiny feet) can damage the few fragile sea creatures left. Look but don’t touch should be the watchword for any field trip.

Susan Tellem

I have known slow growth activist Remy O’Neill for many years. She is a person of the utmost integrity, with a strong ethical core and impeccable values.

Remy’s political involvement has been focused on protecting Malibu from massive development and insufferable gridlock, which would occur with the election of only three council people sympathetic to the overdevelopment of Malibu.

Malibu, be grateful to have a Remy O’Neill in your midst.

Patt Healy

Kris Sandahl drove from Malibu to Oceanside Friday to get her new puppy. She didn’t get pick of the litter, didn’t even get to name it herself. And what’s more, she only gets to keep it for one year.

Tia, an 8-week-old female Golden Lab mix, did come with a red leash and a flashy yellow cape designating her status as a Canine Companion in training.

Playful, friendly, curious, Tia will spend the next 12 months with Sandahl, developing some of the traits she will need to aid her eventual owner, who probably lives in a wheelchair.

Call it Socializing 101. How to deal fearlessly with shopping carts, traffic, bus and airplane travel, and things that go bump in the night. And how to harness the natural instinct to retrieve and then deliver an object, not just to the general vicinity, but exactly into the hand or, for quadriplegics, mouth to mouth. But first, of course, she must learn to subjugate instinctive puppy behavior: chewing, digging, sniffing and chasing everything that moves.

Sandahl, who grew up with a lot of dogs around because her family bred and raised Shelties, says her friends are asking how she could possibly raise a puppy and then give it up?

“I think it will be bittersweet,” she says. “But the joy of being able to help someone else will help with the parting.”

Julie Shular knows all about the parting. In a few days, she will turn in Shoshone, her fourth Canine Companion, a black Lab who grew from a 3-month-old puppy last May to a substantial, 95-pound adult.

Shoshone will join three dogs matriculating in a ceremony in Santa Rosa, where he will then begin a 6-month, “Operant Conditioning” course of advanced training. He will be evaluated by the participant coordinator and trainers for temperament and other characteristics to match him up with a suitable applicant. That is, if he graduates.

“It’s hard to give them up, but the hardest thing is when they call and say, ‘Your dog’s not going to make it,'” Shular said. “You have a sense of failure, that it’s the end of the road. There’s a certain pride in being able to say, ‘I raised four dogs and they all made it,’ but they don’t all make it.”

Of candidates for all kinds of canine assistant programs, only about 45 percent graduate and are placed. Whatever the reason the dog is deemed unsuitable, the person who raised it has the first chance to get the dog back.

It’s often not that the dog is a total washout, but rather that it is just not suitable for a particular kind of work.

“My friend has a release dog that’s now doing Search and Rescue,” Shular said. “Other dogs can do therapy — going to hospitals, nursing homes or shelters for battered women and children.”

Jake, a golden retriever that Shular raised, was released and returned to her.

“I’m glad to have him back,” she said. “They said he was too much of a one-person dog.”

Shular blames some of Jake’s problems on his picky appetite. “Their training is based on food-reward, and he’s not a good eater anyway. He really doesn’t care about food.”

Canine Companions International has a category of placement where the dog is assigned to a facility rather than to one person. Shular’s second dog, Trixie, a female golden retriever, was working for a grade-school teacher when she developed a medical problem that caused her to limp.

She needed surgery, so Shular took her back for recovery. “Even though she was sound after the surgery, wheelchair work was too strenuous for her.”

But there’s usually a right place for such dogs, given their exceptional temperament and training. Trixie is now kind of a poster dog for CCI and accompanies the organization’s spokesman, author Dean Koontz, on public-relations trips. Koontz, a staunch supporter of CCI for 20 years, learned about the organization while researching a book that had a character who needed a canine companion.

“I gave her to Koontz to be a CCI ambassador,” Shular said.

Unlike her other dogs, Shoshone is an eager eater. “He would dive into the food bowl,” she said. “And he was brave about water from the first time at the beach.”

During the socializing process, the dogs must learn to use all forms of travel: planes, trains, buses, even boats. “You have mishaps, but most people are really understanding,” Shular said.

At one time, the dogs were taught to go on escalators; they no longer do because of the safety factor and because people in wheelchairs can’t use escalators anyway. Shular recounts trying to coax Trixie onto an escalator in a department store, but the dog was too frightened. “Pretty soon the store manager came by and asked if it would help to turn the escalator off. She did, and of course Trixie got right on and walked up. Then the manager turned it back on, and when Trixie got on it, all the shoppers cheered.”

For Sandahl, having a friend in Malibu who has been through this training is a real help.

“Julie has been wonderful. She’s the main reason I went with Canine Companions,” she said. “There’s a lot to learn. The philosophy changes over time. I always used choke chains, but now it’s discouraged, it’s a last resort.” The preferred leads are now Halti or Gentle Leader, a nylon strap that goes around the nose as well as the neck.

“I was very active in obedience training and showing,” Sandahl said. “I missed having puppies around, but I didn’t want to be a breeder. This was the perfect solution.”

Sandahl, a music teacher at Juan Cabrillo, is looking forward to taking Tia to school. “I thought it would be neat for the kids to experience.”

Shular says that at 8 weeks of age, the puppy’s brain is fully developed, so you can start to teach them anything. “But they have a short attention span,” she adds. “And there’s a stage when they learn different things. If you can prevent them from learning those things, like eating the cat’s food, if they grow out of the phase without doing it, then they never will.” Shular advises putting lids on trash cans and waste baskets, spraying Bitter Apple on table legs, plants, slippers, anything they might chew. And make every effort to prevent them from taking food off a table or the floor. “If they get something good and they have nothing better to do, they’ll try again. Food success costs you 10 times.”

“Tia is special,” Sandahl said. “She never walked on a leash before and she doesn’t fight it at all. And she isn’t intimidated by loud sounds … or big dogs,” she said, noticing Tia investigating Shoshone, who outstouts her by about 85 pounds and remains completely aloof to her sniffing. “She gets distracted, but she isn’t fearful.”

Shular gives Sandahl tips on everything from marketing to housebreaking.

“They told me to take her out every hour, maybe every two hours at night,” Sandahl said. “The first night I got her home, it was raining and I was standing out there, telling her to hurry, and I thought what did I get myself into?”

She said her husband works at home and is willing to help. “When I’m teaching, he’s taking care of it. Later, when she’s older, I’ll take her to school with me.”

Along with the yellow cape, puppy raisers are give an I.D. card that allows them to take their charges places other dogs are not allowed.

“When I travel, I get a photo laminated to a card that fits in the dog’s cape,” Shular said.

“Bus drivers are usually good,” she said. “And we took 15 dogs, 30 people, to Catalina on the boat. And not one got seasick.”

“I’ve taken mine on the KLON Blues Caravan,” Shular said. “I usually call the clubs ahead so they’re expecting us.”

Shular says there are also many fringe benefits to raising puppies that no one tells you about. “My first one showed me how to slow down, how to live in the moment, notice clouds, walk barefoot in the grass.”

And people smile at your dog.

Sandahl said, “My husband said his face hurt from smiling so much all weekend.”

Shular said she likes to keep a diary, a “baby book” for the person who gets the dog, that it helps them make a connection with their new friend, to understand the dog’s progress in overcoming its fears.

And the sorrow of parting, well, that just goes with the joy of helping someone less fortunate.

“One dog that makes someone independent, the love you give that dog ripples out to everyone.”

Sandahl added, “What a gift, to be able to do this.”

Malibu’s resistance movement has always been about saving a way of life. It began long ago with successful efforts to stop a growth inducing sewering effort. Next we defeated a planned freeway that would have destroyed beautiful Malibu Canyon. Then there were the fights we won against a developer instigated water system boondoggle, the proposed nuclear plant on an earthquake fault in Coral Canyon and a second sewering attempt. Earlier activists like Remy O’Neill and the Road Worriers defeated all of these growth-inducing impositions. And clearly the motivation for this resistance is not venal. Slow growthers, preservationists, and the sustainability side anticipate no financial gain from working to save what’s special about Malibu.

When you look at the famous satellite image of Los Angeles, Malibu is the only coastal area that is still fairly natural. Malibu’s slow growth activists are why we still have horses, mules, llamas, spreading oak trees, soaring hawks, bobcats, fragrant sage, free running streams, deer, mountain lions, spring wildflowers, starry night skies, and yes that magnificent four footed rodent muncher our Native American sisters and brothers called God’s dog. While we see evidence all around us that Malibu’s bureaucracies have not fully appreciated these values, we know that the majority who voted for our present City Council members were hoping to save what’s special.

Isn’t it interesting that until we created our own city, our defenses against unbridled growth never engendered a witch-hunt? Now, don’t get me wrong, Fair election practices and campaign finance controls are essential to the democratic process; but this whole affair seems very strange. If I understand correctly, three people wrote checks amounting to a total of $500 instead of $300. 0n each check two contributors were named, and a required legal phrase was omitted. Even though one legal phrase was omitted on each of three checks, how could that $200 alleged infraction engender months of costly investigation, scandal mongering and brouhaha?

Why was a Kenneth Starr-style investigation required for such picayune omissions? Why were we left to imagine much more serious violations? Who would think that a citizen informing the electorate regarding campaign issues might end up with as much as $5,000 in fines and 2-1/2 years in jail — over $200 in contributions that were reported as to source, but without the words “through an intermediary?” How much are taxpayers forking over for what must be a costly legal proceeding? And what is the civil rights violating court action against Joanne and Gil Segel costing the taxpayer? Will we ever know? Further, we might ask why the city that quakes at the very thought of developer lawsuits would lay itself open to potential damages awarded from countersuits charging malicious prosecution of its citizens? And why has this sort of action never occurred in past elections where irregularities were observed?

In all the years I have known Remy O’Neill, I have observed that integrity is her hallmark, and persistence in the face of challenge is her way of life. “When we get lemons, we make lemonade,” is the quote that best describes the Remy way. Those who now gleefully glory in Malibu’s prosecution of Remy O’Neill and the Road Worriers, imagining that slow growth proponents will be discouraged from further advocacy are baying at the moon.

Howard Steinman