Don’t humans deserve benefits dogs enjoy?

Why should the dogs have it better than we do? Consider this party survival strategy, employed at the Annual Bark & Whine Ball. (This year’s 20th Ball is Thursday, Nov. 16, at the Design Center Galleria in San Francisco.) Attendees are invited to “dine and dance with your dog,” with proceeds benefiting Rocket Dog Rescue, the United States War Dogs Association — both rescuers of pets displaced by the recent fires — and SaveABunny.

Rocket Dog volunteers at this event will be available to take canine guests for a walk. Typically, the walkers approach guests, offering to take a stroll with their four-legged companions. There’s a park very near this year’s venue, says event co-chair Anne Minkin.

But this time-out option would be great for humans at swanky parties. Most of the time, there’s one partner more in the merrymaking mood than the other (who among us hasn’t implored a beloved: Can we go home now?). Why not offer 10- to 20minute strolls for human companions who need a break?

The walkee could take a break from drinking and/or listening to speeches, breathe a little fresh air, and — picture the friendly dogs sniffing each other in the park — use the mini-solo recess as an opportunity to flirt with someone.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and afterward, Minkin says, “it’s never happened that the dog and owner couldn’t be reunited.”

Tickets for the ball are available at www.clawsf.org.

Joel Goodrich, who is to luxury real estate as Stephen Curry is to hoops, has a slice of the broker’s pie in the $17.8 million sale of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s house in Bel Air (Los Angeles County). Goodrich co-represented — with Josh and Matt Altman of “Million Dollar Listing” — buyer Marina Acton, who lives in Silicon Valley. Acton, born in Ukraine, presides over the San Francisco-based Marina Acton Charity Fund, created, says its site, “to facilitate security of personal and professional communications through encryption and digital integrity.”

At October’s Fine Art Print Fair in New York, artist Mildred Howard — one of the artists at the Museum of the African Diaspora’s Afropolitan Ball last week — showed 12 works in “Assegnazione con de Seingalt,” a series of prints made at Shark’s Ink in Lyons, Colo., from collages of antique engravings, digital images, maps, papers and more.

The works were inspired by a two-volume set of books written about Casanova, who also called himself de Seingalt, in 1734. She’d spotted the books in an antiquarian bookstore in Venice, but didn’t buy them immediately. A year later, when they were still “on my mind ... I called the owner to see if they were still available,” she says. The works based on the books were “definitely a big hit” in New York.

Dr. J remembered that Kevin Spacey, whose Netflix series “House of Cards” was shut down after he was accused of unwanted advances on a teenager, is on the advisory board of SFFilm. Spacey was honored with a Peter J. Owens Award in 2002, said the film society, and thus his name was added to the list of members of this “very informal advisory board ... not an active group in any significant way,” said SFFilm’s Laura Molinari. She forwarded a copy of the group’s formal response to “sexual violence revelations in the film industry,” which begins with an expression of sadness and anger, and goes on to reconfirm “a commitment to making the spaces we occupy as safe as possible for everyone in our community.” Sports department: Don Bleu emceed the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley awards luncheon on Friday, Nov. 3, and observed, “We have more people here today than the 49ers had at their last game. Of course, the Law Foundation has a better record. They win a case once in a while.”

And having read the recent item about prices for leisure/cultural attractions soaring sky-high, J.G. noted that there’s one weekend activity that’s become a bargain: 49ers tickets can be purchased for as little as $12.

P.S. Following up on famous No. 35s. The most famous No. 35 of all, says Robert Wieder: JFK.

Every year at this season, a huge pumpkin that was a contender in the Half Moon Bay pumpkin contest rests outside the MarketBar in the Ferry Building. This year’s 1,610pound specimen is a rescue pumpkin. Grown in the Carneros district recently victim to the North Bay fires, it survived the flames only because it had been harvested and brought to Half Moon Bay for the competition. The fires began Oct. 8; the competition was Oct. 9. On behalf of the pumpkin: Whew.

PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING “Because of the delay, I’m going to cut you some extra cheese.” Waiter to patron, overheard at a Michelin-starred restaurant by Paul Bollwinkel