Ever since I got my first dog as an adult, I’ve delighted in taking them to public places.
Savanna frequented the patios of pet-friendly restaurants and was known at the bank, dry cleaners and video store. Bella, Darcy, Twyla and Harper all followed in her pawprints.
These days, not a week goes by that you don’t see us with Harper at Wahoo’s, El Pollo Loco, Zinc Café or Brussels Bistro, to name just a few of our favorites. All of our dogs have eaten out in Carmel, San Francisco, Burlingame, San Diego and elsewhere in California. So when I was told recently that technically it was illegal for dogs to be on restaurant patios, I was stunned. And disbelieving. Were we and our favorite restaurants scofflaws? (Not that that would concern me too much.) I happened to be writing an article about the opening of a dog-friendly restaurant here in Lake Forest, so I decided to look further into the matter.
At first, information officer Ralph Montano at the California Department of Public Health confirmed what I’d been told.
“With the exception of service animals and law enforcement dogs, California Health and Safety Code Section 114259.4 (a) prohibits pet animals from accompanying their owners into retail food facilities, including restaurants.”
Well, yeah, but what about on outdoor patios?
He firmly repeated his previous statement.
Hmm. I went back and looked at my notes for the story. Oh, right, there was a quote I’d found from a California Department of Health Services spokesperson, from an article written in 2006, that said dogs on patios were okay: “(D)gs are allowed throughout California at any outdoor dining areas unless they have to walk through the inside of a restaurant to get to the outdoor seats.”
I asked Montano to clarify. He was surprised and said he’d look further into the matter. When he got back to me the next day, I was much happier with the response.
There’s no formal exemption to allow pets in outdoor seating areas, but local jurisdictions can opt to allow the practice as long as the conditions don’t present a risk of contamination to food being served in the outdoor area.
“When you consider that these seating areas are often adjacent to the public sidewalk with no physical barrier between the sidewalk and the outdoor seating area, it is reasonable to conclude that the animals sitting with their owner in the outdoor seating area would pose no greater risk to the contamination of food than from one passing by on the sidewalk,” Montano said in an email.
It’s up to individual restaurants to check with their city or county health official to determine if their patio area is suitable for pets. I asked Scott Sellers, owner of Milo’s Café, what requirements he’d had to meet for Lake Forest or Orange County.
“Basically, the rule is if you have dogs, you have to have an outdoor-only area for them,” Sellers says. “You can’t have a patio that’s completely enclosed because then air can’t get out. Wherever it’s enclosed, there can’t be pets.”
So, we can continue our outdoor dining without fear of ejection by random health inspectors. Now, to get a hat so Harper can raise money for the Darcy Fund by doing her “sit pretty” trick for the entertainment of passers-by…
Photos: Jerry M. Thornton and Spencer Kornhaber
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