Opinion

It’s the end of the year and that usually means that we all look back and reflect on what we have done and what stands out that we have witnessed over the last 12 months. Then we might think about what we want to make happen next year or call it good and rest on laurels. My guess is that not many will do the latter.

I'm sure most of us are familiar with them: men, women, even children, neatly dressed, often carrying a briefcase or satchel full of literature. They ring doorbells and politely offer to share the Word of God with the residents who answer.

Here at the height of the Christmas season, we’ve kicked it into overdrive. Since Thanksgiving, we’ve been decorating and organizing, gift-finding and wrapping, crafting and baking. House lights are up, stockings are hung, Christmas trees sparkle with magic, as if delivered by Santa himself. In the background we envision an appropriate accompaniment to our colossal efforts: the Boston Pops Orchestra’s playing of the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

Londoners know, and visitors find, that the city is unlike any other capital in the world. London projects the whole essence of Britain. The creation of London at her birth--as an urban settlement dating back to Roman times--tells a story all its own and perhaps a hint of how this grand city of today gathered the strength to survive and become one of the leading cities in the world.

SV Symphony presents holiday concert Dec. 14

hed: Dogs teach people valuable lessonsdek: Training new pets allowed columnist time to become involved in communityJohn McKay • Our [email protected] Saturday after Thanksgiving Michelle and I hit the road on a long awaited getaway with our two “kids”—our Lancashire Heelers Sonny and Abby. They’re dogs. We took our faithful van, Charlie, so we could load up the kids and be comfortable out on the road for days on end without a dog’s nose stuck in the back of my head the entire time.We do a lot to maintain a household with two dogs that most would not consider model canine citizens. But these two dogs have played a key role in how I got involved with the Morgan Hill community.Back in late 2009 I finally got laid off from a job that I had not enjoyed, to put it mildly. Normally this could be the beginning of a sad story but for me it was the beginning of a multi-faceted journey, one that continues today.We decided that it would be a good opportunity to get a couple of dogs, train them, and then drop them off at a kennel on the way to that new job I would find. I found the perfect dog in a book on dog breeds and we found a pair that were six months old—a little older than preferred but the only ones to be found. At this point I want to say that we had lost a pair of dogs that we had for about 16 years, so we were no newcomers to the canine world but we weren’t prepared for what came next.Puppies are adorable. Is there a bad puppy? We took a pair of siblings, a no-no in the dog world, and promptly found out that they had spent six months in a kennel with no other dogs or people except their immediate family. They were never socialized and they were fearful, which is a bad combination.We got the pups home and immediately realized something was wrong. The male couldn’t even walk to the street corner without collapsing and shaking out of fear. We didn’t know what was going on so we found a doggie psychologist, Daphne Robert-Hamilton, who told us that the male was so fearful that it might be best just to put him down. Sonny had been with us only a week but there was no way we could do that to this little guy who looked at me with complete trust in those humanlike, expressive, brown eyes. Besides, they were family now and you don’t give up on family.We embarked on a long journey of training (actually called behavior modification) that included short walks within his comfort level. He slowly got used to cars, kids on bikes and eventually people walking by. We also took Abby out and started training her too but her issues were far less severe. The pair will apparently never be good around other dogs but we accept this now and conduct ourselves with that in mind.Sonny couldn’t be left alone because a common symptom of a fearful dog is separation anxiety. We worked on that by going out the door and back in at first for a few seconds, then minutes, and over a period of months it became hours.After some time, Michelle and I could go about our lives in an almost normal manner. But the sacrifices we make for our kids are acceptable to us because of what we have gotten back.To see Sonny run around the house like a normal dog and dive into a bag of groceries or knock a stack of empty boxes over and push them around makes us just smile and remember the journey to this point.Sonny is my hero. He has overcome an unfair disadvantage in life not of his doing. He is a survivor.Abby is just so darn cute that she gets away with anything. Funny how that works.Working with Sonny kept me from work long enough that I could get involved with our community. I wouldn’t be writing this column or know many of you reading this if it wasn’t for this pair of psycho dogs.We are perfectly happy traveling in Charlie and seeing the world through four sets of eyes wide open.—John McKay is a longtime Morgan Hill resident, a city planning commissioner and a member of the Morgan Hill Tourism Alliance.

If you have been considering changing your landscape to make it more drought tolerant, now is the time. Last month, the Santa Clara Valley Water District Board of Directors voted to continue supporting higher rebate amounts for water conservation programs until next June.In most of Santa Clara County, you could be eligible for a rebate of $2 per square foot of converted landscape. In Palo Alto, Morgan Hill and San Jose Municipal Water’s service area, local cost sharing makes the incentives even larger.Our landscape conversion rebate program is one of the many conservation programs that is helping us through this drought. More importantly, it will help us manage dry periods for years to come. We are working to save nearly 100,000 acre-feet of water a year by 2030. That’s enough water to fill Lexington Reservoir five times.Fortunately, the response to this program during the drought has been overwhelming. From July through October 2014, about 410,000 square feet of thirsty lawns have been converted. The conversion of another 1.4 million square feet of grass is in process.Some people mistakenly believe that a drought-tolerant landscape only means a cactus or rock garden. In fact, our program allows a long list of approved plants, shrubs and groundcovers that are lush, flowering and very colorful. More and more, these types of landscapes will become the norm in our region, in place of lawns that requires mowing, fertilizers and frequent watering.In addition, the water district offers rebates for irrigation equipment that can help you reduce your water use. This includes weather based irrigation controllers, rain sensors, high-efficiency nozzles, dedicated landscape meters and efficient sprinklers. Those rebate amounts have been increased as well. About 90,000 pieces of irrigation equipment have been replaced or are in the process of replacement.To find out about our water conservation programs and their eligibility requirements, visitwww.save20gallons.org or call our water conservation hotline at (408) 630-2554. The water district strives to make the application process as easy as possible, but it is important to check the program requirements before starting any project.The board also extended our call for water use reductions of 20 percent until next June. Despite all the recent rain, our local reservoirs and our groundwater levels are still severely depleted. It will take many more significant storm systems to make up for the three long years of dry weather.Much of this county’s water is imported from outside the county. Those water supplies depend on the Sierra snowpack and the conditions at key state and federal reservoirs such as Lake Shasta and Lake Oroville. State officials estimate that we will need precipitation rates of 150 percent of normal before those reservoirs will recover.As a result, the state has issued an initial forecast for the amount of water it can deliver to our county in 2015 of only 10 percent.The bottom line is that we will start 2015 with far less water than we had at the beginning of 2014. It is essential that we continue saving, rain or shine, for the foreseeable future.—Contact Dennis Kennedy, who represents South County on the SCVWD Board of Directors, by email at [email protected].