One of my teachers invited us to go see his band play at a park downtown. I asked if I could bring a dog and he said yes, people bring dogs there. Well, we got there-- me, the kids, and Bosco-- and not only were there lots of dogs, many of them were OFFLEASH! This park is basically a very large unfenced area. You can clearly see the busy road from the park.
Dogs would run right up to Bosco and want to play. I'd look around and their owner would be 30 feet away, and not concerned.I was so nervous. So far he likes other dogs except Manson, and they liked each other until they realized they were both living in the same place. But still, I kept thinking what if he doesn't like one of them or they don't like him?? I know that if there was a fight he would finish it. And then there would be a "pit bull kills (you insert the breed)" story in the news, even though MY dog was leashed, as the leash law says they all should be.
All went well. We did have a nice time, but I will not be bringing my dogs there again!
I know how you feel. Everytime me and Oscar go to the park there is always like a handful of dogs that are off leash. Mostly small dogs. And then when me and Oscar are trying to walk they run up to him with additude, and their owners think its cute. Sometimes I am afraid Oscar will just swallow one whole. Then we will see if the owners think its cute. But we do have a leash law at the park. Oscar has never been off leash anywhere. Most people are afraid of the big bad dog.
Yeah, that is pretty stupid, Shiny!! I wonder how those dumb ppl would feel if their dog got hit by a car while they were at the park?? Stupid people just p*ss me off!! Some people just shouldn't own dogs!!
When I lived in Savannah there was a huge dog park. I think I was the only person there with my dogs on leash. it drove me nutts when these lil dogs ran up to Storm, she's a big girl and these lil dogs are like the size of her head. She would want to play and she's so rough, she would just knowck them right over and they would roll a few feet. Finally after a guy tried to chew ME out for Storm knocking his dog just playing I stopped going, it wasn't worth the hassle. Mind you his dog was NOT on a leash and Storm was, he was at the total other end of the park.
I finally got permission from my EX's baseball coach to let me bring her to the field and play as long as I picked up her messes. He gave me a key and all, then it was great i'd bring my friends GSD, APBT and AB. They all had a blast!
I don't miss those days! When we lived in the city we would always have our dogs leashed everywhere but there were always loose dogs. We didn't have a fenced yard so we always had to walk them. There was a large park by our house and my main complaint was that altho there was a leash law so many people would bring their dogs there, let them loose & not keep an eye on them at all.
The worse was when we had Samson, our first Great Dane. We got him from the local animal shelter - he had been picked up as a stray and he was dog aggressive which I think was a result of him being loose. I found that most of the loose dogs would come up to him with an aggressive attitude even if he hadn't seen them first so I'm sure that's what he faced on a regular basis when he was running loose. One reason I say that is if we met another dog who was on leash he was absolutely fine - he was only aggressive to loose dogs.
There is a lady in our neighborhood that walks her dog without a leash. The dog is old and nice but it poos all over everyones yards and she doesn't pick it up
Personally, dog parks scare me. Some people think it's their right to bring mean dogs to the park and let them loose to terrorize other people and their dogs. And SBP is right, if there's a fight, my pits will be blamed regardless.
We have the same problem when walking the dogs, with peoples dogs jumping fences or running out through doors from people's houses. It freaks me out when dogs start charging up on us. So now we go armed with pepper spray. If a dog(s) get within a couple of feet of us, we'll just spray it. It's a whole lot better than a dog fight.
