Kiger's Notebook

Not Westminster, but CeleBARK promises fun for dogs, familes

When the contests include worst doggy breath and owner/pet lookalikes, you know it isn't the Westminster Dog Show.

However, you can bet your last collar that Saturday's CeleBARK Your Dog Day in the "backyard" of Rochester's Eagle Club will be a lot more fun for both pets and their families.

Pam Miller, owner of the mobile Bone Appetit Canine Bakery Unleashed, is sponsoring the family-friendly event to honor beloved dogs of all kinds, even those that might have a bit of halitosis. People are encouraged to bring well-behaved dogs that are up-to-date on their vaccinations.

Look for local celebrity judges Marcia Fritzmeier and Dr. Vicki Hunt to brave the bad breath, measure the longest ears and select the most similar dog/owner pair.

Fritzmeier is the handler of Mayo Clinic's popular therapy dog, Dr. Jack. Likewise, Hunt works with the therapy dog, Hershey. Hershey is known "Mr. June" from his appearance in the Rescued Dogs Calendar put out by Paws and Claws.

To help mark the first anniversary of the mobile version of her gourmet dog treat business, Miller wanted to host a fun and different kind of bash.

"I'd like it to become kind of a signature event," she says.

For the humans, both young and old, there will be games, contests, demonstrations and food. There even will be a treasure hunt similar to the Rochesterfest Medallion Hunt.

While fun is a big part of the fest by Bear Creek, it also will be about helping dogs find homes with good families.

"Part of my passion is to try and help rescue groups with their mission," says Miller.

Six rescue groups from Southeastern Minnesota will show off dogs available for adoption, as well as raise money to support their organizations.

While Miller has been locally-known for her homemade, preservative-free dog treats, she began driving her canine bakery and dog accessories shop on wheels to Rochester dog parks last summer.

"We go where the dogs and their owners are," she said.

Miller prides herself on offering the most current and unique products for dogs and the people who love them.

She says CeleBARK is just another way to help her business stand out from the pack.

Woof.

Tag: Columnist, blogger and reporter Jeff Kiger tracks business action in Rochester and southeastern Minnesota every day in Heard on the Street.
Infobox headline: CeleBARK Your Dog Day
Infobox text: BACB Unleashed is sponsoring the free event. which is open to families and their well-behaved dogs.

• Saturday.

• From 11 a.m. to  2 p.m.

• Behind the Eagles Club at 917 15th Ave S.E. in Rochester.

For more information, go to www.BACBunleashed.com.

With weather warming, hot dog man to return to downtown

It feels as if the weather finally has taken a turn for the better and maybe, just maybe, the dogs of winter are leashed again for at least a few months.

That means it's time to start relishing the spring days in the Med City again.

And what better way to do that than with downtown Rochester's gem, Murph's Diamond Dogs. On Monday, Rick Murphy plans to roll out his cart and start serving hot dogs for the hungry packs hunting for a quick and tasty lunch.

Look for the genial Murphy with his ball cap and stainless steel cart at his usual spot in the Peace Plaza by O & B Shoes.

The Pine Island man and his cart have added flavor to downtown for eight years.

That means he has been around downtown longer than the University of Minnesota-Rochester, Sontes, Chester's, the Minnesota BioBusiness Center, 300 First, Social Ice, 318 Commons, Big Brad's, Hot Shots! and lots of other changes.

He was already selling dogs when people started saying "Rah-Rah" about Rochester.He was downtown long before it became "The Place To Be." He was here when DMC was just part of the name of an '80s rap group.

Quite simply, downtown is Murph's turf.

With sun shining and people buzzing around the plaza, it'll be good to have him back where he belongs.

S.E. Minn. is a pretty inventive area

Wrote the latest version of the annual IBM leads all other companies with U.S. patents story for today's paper.

I always enjoy the change to chat with some of IBM's master inventors and look at their patents. I often don't understand much, but I enjoy it. Heh.

This year I decided to see how many patents issued in 2012 included residents from area cities. I found some interesting stuff, including the fact a group of guys from Hormel in Austin were issued a new patent on a bacon bits making process on Christmas Day.

I hadn't look at these community numbers, since I wrote a big package in early 2010, where I determined that Rochester was the most inventive city inMinnesota and probably the U.S. (per 100,000 residents).

It is interesting to note that Rochester people had 488 patents issued to them in 2009, so the numbers have gone up considerably since then. I may need to take a run at this story again.

 

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This is a breakdown of how many patents issued in 2012 included at least one inventor from these southeastern Minnesota cities:

• Rochester — 652 patents

• Byron — 42 patents.

• Stewartville — 10 patents

• Austin — 75 patents

• Mantorville — 27 patents

• Zumbrota — 12 patents

• Pine Island — 36 patents

• Dodge Center — 10 patents

• Lewiston — 14 patents

• Oronoco — 38 patents

Mayo Clinic responds to children's hospital buzz

Mayo Clinic has three hospitals in Rochester - Methodist, Saint Marys and Mayo Eugenio Litta Children’s Hospital.

However, visitors usually count just two hospitals in Rochester. That's the Mayo Eugenio Litta is within Saint Marys. Mayo does have a children's hospital, but it is not easy to point out without its own building.

That's line of thinking that seems to drive waves of speculation that Mayo Clinic might one day want build a separate children's medical complex in Rochester. Rumors surface every couple years or so that just such a project is in the works among the internal teams within Mayo Clinic's elaborate and detailed long-term planning processes.

So recently the "Mayo Clinic is building a children's hospital in Rochester" rumor surfaced yet again. On face of it, it seems like a reasonable possibility.

Well, Mayo Clinic has now decisively resolved any discussion of such a project. I asked a Mayo communications expert about it. Here's the response directly from the source:

"I did some searching and there are no plans for Mayo Clinic to build a separate children's hospital."

There you go. No separate children's hospital will be built in Rochester.

That should resolve that… until talk pops up again a year or two from now. Heh.

Are Irish eyes eyeing Roch.?

While St. Patrick's Day is many months away, some Rochester folks are wishing that the luck of the Irish will bring their favorite pub to town.

The word is that staff at a well-known pub in a nearby state are telling Rochester customers that their Irish eyes are looking at the Med City for a possible second location.

Could such a Gaelic invasion really be on the way for Rochester or is this just some blarney from a server hoping for a bigger tip to add to his pot of gold?

I have no idea, but I plan on going to the end of the rainbow to find out.

New kids place for parties, toys to be off and running soon

Peg Arnold is surrounded by toys these days, but she's not playing around.

Arnold, who with her husband Wally Arnold is a driving force behind the annual Med City Marathon, is launching a toy store and kids party place called Child's Kingdom in northwest Rochester.

After working at the Running Room for years, why is she lacing up her own shop to chase around children?

"I've always enjoyed working with kids," she says. "It is kind of a niche we are trying to fill to give parents another option for parties."

The 2,000-square-foot store will carry a wide variety of toy lines including American Girl, Erector sets, Groovy Girls, games, dress-up costumes and other "classic" toys. It is located at 621 North Broadway in the River Center Plaza shopping center.

While some assembly is still required, Arnold hopes to open the doors of Child's Kingdom this weekend for a soft opening, with an official grand opening event on Nov. 14.

Beyond toys, the shop also has a party room to host theme birthdays and other celebrations. Arnold says she'll meet with the kids to determine what kind of theme will best fit them. The children will also choose games and crafts to have at the party.

"We do it all, when it comes to the party," she says. "By having it here, parents won't have to clean up their house just to get it dirty again."

Kids will also be able to sign up for an online gift registry that will show possible present choices. People will be able to come in the store to buy the gifts or order them online, which Arnold thinks will be a good option for long-distance relatives.

Choosing to open her new place in the River Center Plaza was child's play, she says.

"Having the (Minnesota) Children's Museum here is a big draw," Arnold says.

Mayo Clinic's proton beam center is beaming up

I haven't checked in on the work on of Mayo Clinic's Richard O. Jacobson Building and pencil-beam proton radiation therapy center for a while. I was impressed by what I found when I tramped over there this morning.

It seems that the construction remains focused like a laser with the steel beams rising in downtown Rochester. It gaining altitude just as people are starting to watch the skies for Minnesota's first snowflakes of the season.

This project at the southwest corner of Second Street Northwest and First Avenue Northwest means a boost of about 500 jobs for local construction workers for the next three to four years.

Knutson Construction along with a national firm called Gilbane is building the complex.

This $187.5 million, 220,000-square-foot building might be just the first phase of a much larger project.

Mayo Clinic also has conceptual plans on the table for the possible second phase to build a 17-story tower on top of the Jacobson  complex.

With 19 stories above ground, the building would fall just two floors short of the Gonda Building's 21.

 

Roch. pizza slinger one of best in state

A Rochester man's dough-manship recently earned him a spot as one of the pizza slingers in Minnesota.

"It was kind of exciting for us. We were all cheering for him. He was on the big screen and everything," says Shannon O'Neill of O'Neill's Pizza Pub in the Crossroads Shopping Center.

Cam Kvittem of O'Neill's soared to second place in a pizza tossing contest at the U.S. Foods industry show in the Twin Cities earlier this month.

"If he had been able to use to the dough for our cracker crust, I'm sure Cam would have gone all the way to first," says O'Neill.

He had to use the officially sanctioned "Throw Dough," which is used at all professional pizza competitions.

This is not your mother's pizza dough tossing. This is a true athletic competition.

To set the stage, the "Food Fanatics" convention featured a dough throwing demonstration by the official U.S. Pizza Team. Yes, there really is a U.S. Pizza Team, which travels around the circuit of official dough tossing competitions.

This culinary sport puts a new spin on pizza preparation with fancy moves, spins and elaborate routines.

Once the dough pros left the state, Minnesota's best pizza slingers stepped up to show what they could do. The big crowd of hopefuls quickly thinned out as the panel of judges trimmed out the less graceful of the pizza throwers.

Soon it came to down to the final three, the O'Neill's crowd cheering Kvittem.

"He can do it all…rolling it down his back and the fancy throws," she says. "That's what the free-style contest comes down to…who can do the most tricks."

His moves impressed the panel, which awarded Kvittem the silver pepperoni medal (OK. I made the pepperoni medal up).

Roch's Transportation Tuesday features planes, buses and cars

Looks like Rochester has a Transportation Tuesday underway this week with two events - Allegiant Air's Vote for Vacation campaign and Kwik Trip's seminar about compressed natural gas as a vehicle fuel - both scheduled.

Allegiant Air's "campaign" bus pulled into downtown Rochester late Monday to park near the Peace Plaza in preparation for a morning of light-hearted voting combined with a serious memorial.

Voting for a favorite vacation destination will put people in the running to win four years of free airfare or a free pair of round trip tickets to any Allegiant destination.

The first 100 voters will be given a $21.60 "tax break" toward their next Allegiant vacation. That's about the equivalent of how much government taxes and fees add to the cost of a round trip flight.

Since the Allegiant stop in Rochester falls on Sept. 11, Mayor Ardell Brede will speak and lead the crowd in a moment of silence at 7:46 a.m. as the Bell of Honor tolls for those who lost their lives in the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

Kwik Trip's free seminar about compressed natural gas is then scheduled from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m at the Ramada Inn Hotel & Conference Center, 1517 16th St. S.W., Rochester.

Kwik Trip will introduce compressed natural gas, or CNG, as a fueling option in Rochester at the new station being built along 19th Street Northwest by CostCo's new store.

Storm Chasers' Dominator blowing into Roch.

The Discovery Channel's "Storm Chasers" regularly drive their Dominator vehicle through crazy weather even wilder than Rochester saw last night.

Local fans will have a chance to check out the Dominator on Thursday (tomorrow) when Line-X of Rochester brings the tank-like vehicle to Rochester for an appearance. Line-X offers special spray-on protective coatings, primarily to protect truck beds.

Look for the Dominator to be parked on display in the parking lot of Andy's Liquor at 3125 Wellner Drive, near Whistle Binkie's North.

Local Line-X owner Chris Mertesdorf says the Dominator should be out there by 10 a.m. and should be out there until at least 4:30 p.m.

The Dominator is designed to plow through storms with winds up to 200 mph. The winds that hit Rochester last night topped out at just a little more than 70 mph.

The whole vehicle is covered with Line-X's XS-650 spray-on protective coating.