The Dog Park

Sunday, September 21, 2008 by Dana.

Several times a week, we take our 3 dogs to a dog park.  For those not familiar with having a dog in Suburbia, a dog park is the only place other than your home where you can have your dog off a leash so it can run, get exercise, or mark his territory on a shrub.
Our 3 dogs have a very high-drive, which means we have to get them out often to run and play.  Nothing against the dog park, but it is analogous to taking your child to a McDonald’s Playland.  You would rather your kids be able to run through the woods or play in the barn like you did as a kid, but here you have to expose them to a germ-infested area of plastic slides and snot-covered plastic balls.  For the dogs, you can’t take them to the neighborhood park to play fetch or even let them out to chase a rabbit in the neighborhood.  You have to expose them a collection of potentially sick dogs and shrubs marked with more urine than an urban fire hydrant.

As working with them on new tricks… forget about it!  There are far too many distractions with multiple different dogs and people.  A couple of our dogs have learned to fetch a tennis ball in the backyard, yet they will make no effort to do so at the dog park.  The distractions keep them from giving you the focus to complete the trick, plus our dogs have no interest in sharing a tennis ball with hundreds of other dogs.  You don’t know where that ball has been, and the dogs seem to understand the same concept.  Taking your own ball is not an option unless you want to see your dogs get into a fight with another dog that thinks it can chase any ball in the park.

What can we do? Nothing.  It is what it is.  The leash laws are because a few aggressive dogs have hurt or killed people.  Even if you have an old, arthritic dog with 3 legs that is blind in one eye, you still have to have it on a leash.   Should we go back to holding people accountable if their dog is not kept in control so those that can control their dogs can take them to any park to play?  What are your thoughts?

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