"James Curts" wrote in message news:yDXRa.78891$OZ2.13823@rwcrnsc54...

I live in the Portland Oregon area...

Apparently Portlanders (Portlandites?) take their government
regulations quite seriously.

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"The owners of some of the 16 or more dogs believed to have been
poisoned at Southeast Portland's Laurelhurst Park between July 3 and
July 9 think the poisoning is related to the city's controversy over
off-leash dogs.
And Sgt. Brian Schmautz, spokesman for the Portland Police Bureau,
says they may be right.
"Obviously, we won't know until we have a suspect and know what his
motive was," Schmautz said Wednesday. "But we've been hearing
anecdotally that many of these (affected) dogs were possibly off-leash
and that the substance may have been left in places, like bushes,
designed to target off-leash dogs."
Veterinarians who treated some of the dogs suspect that they were
poisoned with meat laced with the highly toxic herbicide paraquat.
Results of tests done on several of the eight dogs that have died so
far were not available at press time.
Paraquat, which is used for weed control, can be legally purchased
and sold in Oregon only by people or businesses with special licenses
from the Oregon Department of Agriculture.

http://www.portlandtribune.com/archview.cgi?id=19225
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It may not have been paraquat at all. Perhaps the dogs just stumbled
upon some unwashed organic produce. ~8^)

--Hua Kul