Why Mesa Dogs Are Wearing Mesh Masks at Douglas Family Preserve
September 3, 2026
September 3, 2026
Adam Birnbaum walks his nine-year-old springer spaniel Rupert on the Douglas Family Preserve twice a day, rain or shine. For a stretch of the year that runs from late winter into early fall, those walks happen with Rupert in a mesh hood that makes him look like he's about to rob a bank. It is not a costume. It is called an Outfox mask, and Birnbaum started using one after a foxtail worked its way into Rupert's eardrum and the dog needed to be sedated to get it out. The bill ran about $1,200.
If you live on the Mesa and walk the bluff trails above Arroyo Burro, you have probably seen a dog in one of these masks and wondered what was going on. The short answer is foxtail grass. The longer answer, the one that actually explains why this keeps happening on a piece of land the neighborhood loves and uses every single day, is a story about how thin the city's coverage of its own open space really is.
Foxtails are not native to the preserve, and that matters more than it sounds like it should. The seed heads have a barbed shape that only travels in one direction, so once a foxtail catches in a dog's ear canal, nose, or paw, it burrows deeper with every movement instead of working its way back out. That is why a seed the size of a grain of rice can turn into a sedation-and-extraction procedure. It is also why the fix isn't as simple as mowing the grass down once and moving on.
Douglas Family Preserve is genuinely central to how people on the Mesa spend their time outdoors. It sits on 68 acres above Arroyo Burro Beach, donated to the city in 1997, and its perimeter loop and interior paths see more foot traffic than any other open space the city maintains. Off-leash dogs are allowed in designated sections as long as they stay under voice control, which is part of why it functions as the neighborhood's de facto dog park even though it was never built as one.
At a Santa Barbara Parks and Recreation Commission meeting earlier this year, Jim Marshall, chairman of the Friends of Douglas Family Preserve and a board member of the Mesa Neighborhood Association, pushed the city on exactly this point. The problem isn't that nobody mows the foxtails. It's when they mow them.
The practice "leaves the seed heads broadcast across the very paths people and dogs use every day," Marshall told the commission.
Here's the mechanism: fire crews under contract with the fire department have typically done a second round of weed-whipping in June, timed to reduce fire fuel load, which lands after the foxtail seeds have already matured. Weed-whipping mature seed heads scatters them across the trail surface instead of removing them, which means the maintenance pass meant to make the preserve safer for fire season becomes the same pass that seeds the trail for the rest of the summer. Heavy rains arrived early this past winter, which pushed the city to contract with Channel Islands Restoration to mow the perimeter trails and parts of the interior ahead of that seed set, but Parks and Recreation director Jill Zachary has acknowledged that chemicals aren't allowed in the preserve and the terrain is too small in places for the sheep-and-goat grazing programs the city uses at larger sites like Parma Park. That leaves hand-pulling, mowing, and weed-whipping as the only tools available, and the timing keeps landing in the same awkward spot.
The upshot for anyone walking a dog on the Mesa right now, at the end of August, is that if this year followed the same rhythm as recent summers, the June whipping already happened and any seed heads it scattered have been sitting on the trail surface since. The mask window Birnbaum uses, running into early fall, is still worth keeping on hand for a few more weeks.
It would be easy to read this as neglect, but the numbers tell a different story. Zachary's department stretches its staffing across roughly 1,800 acres of city parks, beaches, gardens, trails, camps, and recreation facilities, and only one person on staff is dedicated to open-space management specifically. Between Parks and Recreation and the fire department, the city oversees 23 other open spaces beyond the preserve. Douglas Family Preserve carries a $1.1 million endowment, and Marshall's group has offered to raise money to help grow that fund, along with volunteer labor for planning and maintenance work the city hasn't fully taken them up on yet.
That is the part of this story that says something true about the Mesa beyond the grass itself. The neighborhood's most-used piece of public land runs on a mix of a stretched city crew and a volunteer group that shows up to commission meetings with specific, technical asks. The mask on your neighbor's dog is a small, visible symptom of a much bigger truth: keeping this stretch of bluff walkable is a shared project between the city and the people who actually use it every day, not something that happens automatically.
The same pattern shows up half a mile away at Elings Park. Its EPDOG off-leash program, which gives members access to all 230 acres of the park, is funded entirely by memberships and donations at $150 per dog per year, with proof of a current city or county pet license required before anyone can sign up. Elings Park receives no government funding at all. If Mesa residents want an off-leash space that's maintained to a certain standard, in other words, they've largely built the funding mechanism themselves.
Douglas Family Preserve isn't an island. It sits at the hinge point of a longer route that a lot of Mesa residents already run without thinking about it as a single loop, but it is one:
Walk that loop on any given Saturday and you'll pass through public land maintained by three different funding models: a city department stretched thin across 1,800 acres, a private nonprofit park that survives on membership fees, and a beach park that leans on volunteer groups like the Friends of Douglas Family Preserve to fill the gaps neither of the other two can cover.
None of that shows up if you just read a listing description or a visitor's guide to the neighborhood. It shows up if you actually live here and notice the mask on your neighbor's dog, or the weed-whipper crew on the bluff trail in June, or the sign-up table for EPDOG memberships at the Elings Park kiosk.
Most of this loop ends the same way it starts: with food. Mesa Cafe on Cliff Drive has been serving the neighborhood since 1984 and still fills up on weekend mornings with people coming off the bluff trails. Mesa Burger on Meigs Road does the same job for the after-beach crowd looking for something heartier than coffee. Both are the kind of places where you're more likely to run into someone from your street than a tourist, which is part of what makes the Mesa feel like a neighborhood and not just a stretch of coastline.
If you're the kind of person who already knows which staircase has better sunset light or which weeks call for a dog mask, you probably don't need convincing that this is a special place to live. Vince Caballero Homes keeps a close eye on what's actually happening in the neighborhoods we work in, from trail maintenance schedules to the small civic fights that shape daily life here. If a conversation about the Mesa ever turns toward what your home is worth in today's market, we offer a confidential home valuation whenever you're ready to have that conversation. Until then, enjoy the walk, and if your dog hasn't had its foxtail moment yet this season, you might want that mask a little longer.
