This story first appeared in The Scene, Berkeleyside’s arts and culture newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox every Thursday morning for tips on can’t-miss happenings in and around town, news about artists and tidbits you won’t find anywhere else.
After we shared a photo in our Saturday newsletter of a stick-and-ball library with pooches for patrons, Berkeley resident Pilar Kearney reached out and introduced us to the library’s branch manager.
It’s her dog PupPup, a 1-year-old Saint Berdoodle who enjoys belly rubs, stealing scrunchies and chasing squirrels around the Cal campus. PupPup’s also a major collector of sticks, which he finds on hikes in Tilden and brings home to 1839 Addison St., dropping them unceremoniously on the back porch.
In October, aiming to share PupPup’s twiggy treasures with the canine community, Kearney built the library out of stackable plywood crates, which she painted in blue and red and decorated with white paw prints and instructions to “take one, leave one.” It’s installed in front of the home she shares with her partner, Phil Weiss, and is free to all.
Little Free Libraries have been in Berkeley for at least a decade now. And Andrea Scharff has created a three-inch-high art gallery near the Rose Garden. But while the idea has a few precedents, this is likely Berkeley’s first stick-and-ball library for dogs.
Most of the tennis balls are foraged weekly from Sports Basement’s free used ball collection, though in celebration of the library’s opening, MY Coffee Roastery down the block donated some “fancy balls.” And a neighbor gifted a “special stick” he said he’d “been holding onto for years and saving for the right occasion.” According to Kearney, the stick is smooth and shiny, with a “good mouth feel.”
“PupPup of course singled out that ‘special stick’ right away and took it inside,” Kearney said. “He still holds onto it and won’t let me move it from the back porch, so it must actually be very valuable in dog culture.”
It’s a cute story, but PupPup’s penchant for sticks sometimes gets in the way of his official duties as library caretaker.
“The reason it’s always short on sticks and heavy on balls is because PupPup still isn’t a huge fan of sharing his prized sticks, and every time we walk past the library, he retrieves one and brings it back,” Kearney said. “I keep telling him people are going to think we’re running a racket, if we’re asking for donations for ‘the community’ that he ends up personally profiting from, but he looks at me confused and keeps chewing on his stick.”
