Recently, Los Angeles County passed a law that allows dogs to dine on the outdoor deck or patio, provided they enter the patio from an outdoor gate and don’t sit on a chair or table. There’s an interesting article about it here.

Of course, I am one of those people who thinks dogs should be able to go everywhere with us. As I have said, European dogs get to go LOTS of places that our dogs in the States don’t get to go. I spent a lot of time in the Netherlands at one point and the dogs I met there were astoundingly well socialized. They never seemed to argue with each other over silly things, they went to cafes and pubs. I wonder how they do that.

{Cool picture of a dog in a cafe in Salzburg, Austria here, one in Amsterdam here, this one and this one in Flickr photo streams, and this Japanese site with what I believe is a 1575 yen calendar of cafe dogs.}

If you’d eat dinner at the home of a dog owning friend, what’s the difference between that, a situation where the dog generally has access to the kitchen, and eating in a restaurant where there’s a dog at someone’s feet, where it doesn’t have access to the kitchen? I guess not everyone would eat dinner in the home of a dog owner.