When I checked into the hotel for LOSCon, I noticed that there were four courtyard gardens on the floor where my room was. In fact, the room had a sliding-glass door that opened into the one where the pool was located. But the others looked interesting — in particular the Japanese garden. Japanese gardens are a particular passion of mine. The first night, I was exhausted from 14 hours of travel, so I only visited the pool (well, actually the hot tub), but when I went to peek into the “California” garden, I noticed the sign in the hallway now called it the Malibu Garden.

I wondered what that might bode…

This morning, I finally around to visiting the other two. They have been similarly renamed. What used to be the Spanish Garden is now the Pasadena Garden. And the Japanese Garden is now the Hollywood Garden.

Discouragingly, they were all generically similar. They had large open areas with planters and tables with ashtrays. And trashcans with ashtrays. They seemed to be intended mostly to be a place for smokers. They’re not unattractive, but I was disappointed to not have any defining characteristics to distinguish them.

My disappointment was mostly just due to seeing the original names and imaging that they might once have been differentiated thematically. Well, with one exception.

What used to be the Japanese garden is now the place where they’ve sited an area for dogs to relieve themselves. When I first spotted it, I wondered if maybe it was a putting green or something. But then I saw the post with the bags for dog poop. And, if that wasn’t enough of a giveaway, there was actually some dog poop that a dog owner had not picked up.

I debated whether it was more offensive to turn a Japanese garden into a dog park. Or to use the Hollywood garden for that purpose.

Still, it is nice to have a place for the doggies to do their business, rather than to make them go all the way down to the street.