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Two recent dog attacks in Juneau are under investigation by Animal Control.

Gastineau Humane Society Executive Director Chava Lee says the first incident happened on Thanksgiving when a large mixed breed dog attacked a smaller breed dog on 1st Street in Douglas.

“That dog, the dog that was attacked, unfortunately, did not make it,” Lee says. “It died during the night. You know, a really, really sad situation.”

The second incident happened Wednesday afternoon about 4:15 p.m. when three unaltered pitbulls attacked an unaltered mixed breed dog and his owner, who were walking near Hospital Drive. Lee says the dog that was attacked suffered severe injuries, but is expected to be okay. His owner was taken to Bartlett Regional Hospital for treatment of bites sustained while trying to break up the attack.

“She got bit and then a bystander came by who was pretty heroic actually in keeping the dogs away from her and away from the other dog,” she says.

Lee says the pitbulls’ owners were also at the scene and took responsibility for allowing their dogs to escape from an enclosure. In both cases, she says the owners of the attacking dogs received citations. The dogs themselves are under quarantine for 10 days, and Lee says the owners will have to take further precautions to ensure public safety.

“There will be signs posted indicating their dangerous status,” says Lee. “They’ll have to wear particular collars. They will have to be on leads at all times, short leads. They’ll probably have to wear muzzles. They’re going to have to be altered.”

Whenever there’s an attack involving a pitbull, Lee says she hears from people who want to ban them in Juneau. But she says that’s not the way to prevent dog attacks.

“We have just seen some amazing pitbulls that are just incredible dogs. And we’ve also seen dogs that aren’t pitbulls that are extremely aggressive and dangerous,” Lee says. “So it’s just this particular breed has a horrible reputation.”

In the other case, Lee notes the attacking dog was not a pitbull. Since the other dog died in that incident, she says it remains under investigation and Animal Control is seeking witnesses to the attack.

“There are possibly more restrictions that are going to be coming,” she says.

Lee declined to identify any of the people involved in either incident, saying it’s for their safety. She says it’s not unusual for Animal Control to respond to two dog attacks in one week, but the severity of these attacks is out of the ordinary.

McGee could be the face of a bleak holiday to come for some Southeast dogs and cats.

The overweight, friendly, 10-year-old Australian Shepherd was surrendered by owners who could no longer care for him.

He’s in the care of the Ketchikan Humane Society, which put him on a diet and plans to neuter him before he’s put up for adoption.

As a likable, active, housebroken purebred, he’s got a good shot at eventually finding a home.

But in the meantime, he and other humane society dogs are in need of some temporary housing over the holidays.

Before they’re adopted, most society pets spend time in what’s called a foster home. They’re socialized, house- and kennel-trained, and treated for any illnesses, if there’s a need.

“The Ketchikan Humane Society tries to foster our rescues in a home environment as much as possible,” says Board President Gretchen Moore. “So when we place an animal, a cat or a dog or a macaw or a rabbit or whatever we have, that animal’s ready to slide seamlessly into a family home and be part of a family.”

(Scroll down for links to Southeast shelters, animal control offices and rescue groups.)

But right now, there’s a shortage.

Moore owns a kennel and pet-supplies shop called Groomingdales Pet Resort. She cares for a number of the dogs at home, and keeps them in empty kennels while at work.

She says those kennels will soon fill up with paying customers, because so many people board their pets while traveling for Christmas.

“I take the rescue dogs to work every day with me and I take them home in the evening. But during the day I’m going to run out of spots here because I have a lot of guests who are going to be showing up for the holidays,” she says.

As a result, the humane society is looking for more foster homes, which usually take pets for a few days to a month.

John Harrington, another board member, says Ketchikan also has more rescued cats and kittens than it can handle.

“It is so much so that at this point, unless this community comes forward and starts adopting them rapidly, we’re going to be moving into a kill process of getting rid of cats all over the place,” he says.

Juneau’s Gastineau Humane Society has also seen an influx of cats and kittens this year.

It also boards dogs. But Office Manager Samantha Blankenship says it doesn’t have so many holiday reservations that rescues will get pushed out.

Meanwhile, the society is warning against another holiday issue: unwanted gift pets.

“We, of course, always encourage people not to give an animal as a gift to someone unknowingly. They should be a part of the decision of both deciding to get an animal and choosing the animal for themselves,” she says.

Both the Ketchikan and Juneau societies are trying to find homes for older pets.

Juneau’s Blankenship says they don’t usually need house-training, and are easier to care for.

“There’s plenty of animals that are in need of homes that are in their senior years that still have many years left. (They) just may be a little bit more mellow than a puppy or a kitten and may be not requiring of so much effort,” she says.

The Ketchikan society, like Juneau’s and many other towns’, spays or neuters all adoptees, to limit the number of new strays.

Here’s a list of some Southeast Alaska pet shelters, animal control offices and rescue groups. Email ed@coastalaska.org if we missed your group and we’ll add it.

• The Ketchikan Humane Society
• The Gastineau Humane Society, Juneau
• Southeast Alaska Organization for Animals (SOFA), Ketchikan and Juneau
• The Petersburg Humane Association
• St. Francis Animal Rescue, Wrangell
• Sitka Animal Shelter
• Haines Animal Rescue Kennel
• Paws and Claws Animal Shelter, Skagway
• Craig Animal Control

An earlier version of this report switched Thompson and Moore’s names. We regret the error.

Youth leadership programs in Alaska are making a difference. That’s what a panel of teens said Wednesday during the second day of the Prevention Summit put on by the state Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. Eight teenagers from Southeast Alaska spoke about youth leadership programs like Rebound, Lead On, and Sitka Youth Leadership Committee.

18-year-old Juneau resident Lilli Pothier participated in AWARE and SAFV‘s outdoor leadership program Rebound, in which she and several other female teens went on a week-long kayak expedition. She says the lessons she learned help contribute to the prevention of sexual assault and domestic violence.

“The statistics on sexual violence and assault are well known,” Pothier states. “Many, many women in Alaska have been impacted by these problems, and to stand up and speak out against it, we need to be intact, we need to feel whole, and we need to have a sense of our own power, and that’s what this trip gives to participants.”

Here’s what the teens said about what makes a good leader:

Korbyn Powers: I think leadership is just not judging people for anything they’ve done, just being there for other people in your community and respecting everyone’s differences.

Lilli Pothier: Leadership is service and it’s service with respect and compassion, and leadership is being connected to the people and the place that you’re in.

Tilani Meyers: Being a leader is being positive. Like first you have to kind of take what you say to people, like, “You should do this and this.” You should actually be what you’re telling people to do, like, I like to see positivity in my community, so recently I’ve changed from my negative ways, I guess, and now I’m a really positive person and it’s helped me a lot.

Nick Bouker: A favorite quote I like to go by is, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Everyone knows that by Gandhi and I think that’s a great example of what a leader should be, is be the change, set examples, and tell your peers what you think they should do to better their future and better themselves.

Analicia Castaneda-Felipe: I think setting a good example for your peers and others in your community. It doesn’t seem as easy as it is. Just doing things that you think is right and hopefully somebody will see that and be inspired to do the same.

Justin Wantanabe: You may not think that you may be able to change the world, the entire world, but even if you just do some positive changes and try to do the best you can in the small communities that we have here, you can definitely see a change.

Abbey VandenBerg: I think leading by example is very important but I also think there’s something to say about being willing to take responsibility and step up and kind of organize movements of change. I think that that’s really what’s needed with youth leaders is the willingness and the confidence to take the initiative and be the driving force behind a movement. I feel like, a lot of times, teenagers especially, we want to do something but we don’t know exactly how and I feel like that’s a role that a youth leader can really step into.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to correct the organizations that run Rebound. A previous version of this story had stated that Rebound is run by AWARE. Rebound is actually run by both AWARE and SAFV (Sitkans Against Family Violence).

Next Tuesday marks the big holiday event for downtown Juneau.

Alaskans are being invited to the Governor’s Annual Christmas and Holiday Open House.

Over 24,000 cookies and over 100 pounds of fudge and chocolate candies are being prepared for the event. As has been the practice during past open houses at the governor’s house, members of the governor’s cabinet will serve hot apple cider and holiday treats to guests waiting in line outside the residence.

The holiday open house runs from 3 to 6 p.m. next Tuesday, December 10th.

A Juneau advisory panel backed conceptual plans to develop an off-road vehicle park out-the-road Tuesday night.

Meanwhile, some North Douglas residents are threatening lawsuits against Juneau for merely considering the possibility of developing an off-road vehicle park near their homes.

Public testimony at Tuesday’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee meeting was largely a rehash of the asymmetric rhetoric it heard in its November meeting. Sixteen North Douglas residents sounded off in public testimony in opposition to the one particular site under consideration near their homes. They’re concerned about noise, property values and their quality of life. A dozen riding enthusiasts more or less testified that they support the creation of any legal place in Juneau to ride their dirt bikes, ATVs and snowmachines.

The other four sites under the committee’s consideration were not challenged by nearby residents in public testimony.

The North Douglas residents are particularly upset because they fought back a more expansive off-road vehicle park plan in 2008 that would have brought motorized vehicles on trails as close as 350 feet to their homes. Tuesday’s concept did not include trails and limited off-roading to the floor of the city-owned rock quarry off Fish Creek Road. It’s about 1,400 feet to the closest homes.

In about two hours of testimony, there was anger, straight talk, legalese, distrust and appeals from riders.

• Benjamin Carney: “The current approach the city is taking lacks intelligence and appears to be motivated by desire. Rather than focusing on a large area that would be met by – with little resistance, legalities and reason have been suspended to ram through a park for which there is great resistance and legal reasons to not do so.”
• Jim Sheehan:“I am a person who loves snow machining, four-wheeling and dirt bikes. I grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, I’m a lifelong Alaskan. It just—you know, love it, have no problem with it. I just don’t want it in my backyard.
• Kent Sullivan:”My issue with this proposal at Fish Creek is what’s called ‘res judicata.’ And res judicata in the law means ‘a matter adjudged.’ And what that doctrine means is that once a matter has been decided, it can’t be brought up again.”
• Vance Sanders (who is a member of the KTOO Board of Directors):“We’ve been at this now, the neighborhood association in north Douglas, this is the second time– it’s like Groundhog Day for us. We don’t trust the city as far as we can throw them. You know, we thought this was done before when we met this issue head on, and we were done with this, that we were done with this for awhile. And here we are again.”
• Joleen Langel:”I can tell you no matter where we go, no matter where you put us, we’re gonna be happy. But at the end of the day, we’re not going to displace anybody else because we have been the displaced. We know what it’s like when you get kicked out of your sandbox. It hurts your feelings. And you don’t want anybody else to feel that way.”

What two of those speakers did not mention in their testimony was that they recently threatened the city in writing with a lawsuit for merely considering the Fish Creek site.

In a Nov. 12 letter to the city attorney, Kent Sullivan and Jim Sheehan (both North Douglas residents and lawyers) wrote that “relatively soon” the city should “reasonably expect litigation regarding any further suggestion that it is appropriate to use the Fish Creek Quarry.”

Tuesday, the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee voted 8-0 to recommend the Juneau Assembly pursue two out-the-road sites for a possible park and to ditch any consideration of sites near homes.

One site is city-owned at Mile 35. City staff estimates put its development costs at $3 to $12 million. However, riders have said they can donate a lot of labor and materials to defray that cost.

The other site is a quarry owned by Goldbelt Inc. near Echo Cove. It’s unclear if the Native corporation is amenable to making a deal for public access to its land. If it were, the city estimates the cost of developing the site into an off-road vehicle park at less than $250,000.

“So we’re putting all of our eggs in the Goldbelt basket right now,” said advisory committee chairman Jeff Wilson.

His committee’s recommendation doesn’t put the lawsuit threat to bed, because the decision-making power on whether an off-road vehicle park gets funding and permitting lies with the Juneau Assembly and the Planning Commission.

To quote Powder Magazine editors, Juneau’s Eaglecrest is definitely the “little mountain that could.”

The city-owned ski area has made it to the final round of the Ski Town Throwdown, knocking out Michigan’s Mount Bohemia.

Voting ended at 8 o’clock last night (Tuesday), with Eaglecrest garnering 4,569 votes to Mount Bohemia’s 1,811.

Mount Bohemia is a small ski area in the Upper Peninsula, and like Eaglecrest, it was not expected to get to the Final 4 of the magazine’s March Madness-style popularity contest.

The magazine started with 64 ski areas in four regions.  Eaglecrest – in the magazine’s words – is a Cinderella story.

It became the Great White North champion after getting more votes than the British Columbia ski resorts of Whistler/Blackcomb, Mount Washington, Red Mountain, Kicking Horse and Revelstoke, then beat the Far East champion, Mount Bohemia.

And in the words of the magazine, “the hearty Alaskan crew has its eyes on the finals and a shot at Ski Town immortality.”