There’s a fairly large – and very well kept – dog park two or three towns over from us, and occasionally we’ll take our dogs there. There are a few no-brainer rules clearly posted and scattered around the paths like “clean up after your dog” and “you are responsible for your dog’s behavior”. When the weather is nice everybody and their brother and their dogs appear.
One thing I’ve noticed is that I’ve rarely seen little kids, or even slightly older kids there. Maybe a teenager or two, but that’s it. Everyone else is an adult.
There are no rules posted saying that little kids aren’t allowed.
My guess it’s more of a common sense type thing: You don’t let little kids run around a place where unpredictable off leash dogs run around. Common sense means that just that. Some people – like the mother the OP described – are either a few brain cells short of possessing it OR she was desperate to find something for the kids to do. But still.
It’s cause to demand that the kids leave my dog alone. They may have a right to be in the park but they are not entitled to interact with my dog. If the kids can’t control themselves and stay away from my dog, then yes, they should leave. They’re the ones causing the problem. My dog is just being a dog.
And you know - if something bad happens, it’s going to be my dog who gets blamed for it. If a kid get knocked over or nipped or frightened, it’s the dog who gets blamed. The kid is always a Perfect Precious Angel who was attacked - without warning! - by the vicious, untrustworthy, beast. Until I’m ready to trust your kid - keep your kid away from my dog.
Fuck that. The dog park is the one place in the city where the dogs can get some proper exercise. It’s not a freaking petting zoo.
It’s a public park and nobody has the authority to order anyone else to leave. If they’re breaking the law, call the park rangers. If they’re not, suck it up and deal.
The dog owner whose dog doesn’t like kids needs to get a fenced in yard of his own, where he can call the shots. Even if these particular kids left, there’s no guarantee that another dog owner won’t bring a young child to the park.
It seems like half the people in this thread have no idea what a “dog park” is.
It’s an area that’s been specifically fenced off so that dogs can run around off-leash and play with each other. Letting your little kids play in the dog park may be technically legal, but it’s dangerous and rude as hell. It’s like letting your little kids play in the skate park – you’re interfering with the reason the park exists in the first place (giving skateboarders a place to skate where they won’t bother other people) and you’re setting them up for injury when someone skates over them.
My dog is incredibly friendly and loves to play with people. He’s so friendly that if you come up to say hello there’s a good chance he’ll jump on you. When I walk him I keep him on a tight leash. If he meets a little kid in the street I hold his harness to keep him under control so he doesn’t knock them over. What am I supposed to do if you bring your little kid to the dog park? Run over and leash him? The whole reason we’re there is so he can play off leash. That’s why the dog park exists in the first place.
I think the right answer is that the dog has more right to be there than the kids. I also think that having three kids under 4 has rotted that mother’s brain. (And why wouldn’t it.)
Around here, you must have a dog to be in the dog park. I don’t think there needs to be yelling to enforce that, but still, the way it is set up in my area is that these dog parks are for dogs with dog minders. A polite conversation would be the best way, but yes, the result is that the dog-less (heathens! ha!) family should not be hanging out in the dog park. IN MY LOCALE.
I recall, actually, meeting up with a friend and her dog in a dog park and I got there first, and it seemed a little funny to be at the dog park with no dog. No one said anything to me, so I never had to explain I was waiting for my dog date to arrive. I wonder what the reaction would have been?
I have a 10 year old with major ADHD. I also have a very mellow female black Labrador, about 6 years old. The three of us regularly go to a neighborhood dog park and have a good time.
MOST of the dogs I see there are very friendly and social when running around off leash, and generally like to be petted/played with.
MOST of the owners are very nice people who don’t mind letting kids pet their dogs… and when one of them warns kids NOT to play with the dog, there’s usually a good reason.
MOST of the kids are pretty sweet, and I haven’t seen any mistreating or teasing the dogs.
So, on one hand, I guess I’ve just been lucky. Almost none of the people OR the dogs I run into are mean, unfriendly or badly behaved.
I don’t know any of the people described by the OP. I can only say that:
In and of itself, kids in the dog park don’t bother me at all.
I would ONLY be bothered if kids were actively taunting a dog, or trying to play with a dog AFTER the owner had told them politely “My dog isn’t comfortable arounds kids- you shouldn’t try to pet her or play with her.”
So, to me, that’s the real question- were the kids doing anything out of line? If they were, the dog’s owner has every right to tell their parent(s), “Please keep your kids away from my dog,” or “Please don’t bring your kids here if they don’t know how to behave properly- they’re just ASKING to get bitten.”
But if these were just nice, sweet toddlers who wanted to hug/pet willing doggis, the owner was out of line.
My own dog loves attention, so if a 3 or 4 year odl without a dog wanted to give my dog a tummy rub, I’d say, “Go ahead. She’ll love it.”
This is my first reaction, but we don’t know what the parents’ motivation was. It could be they just lost a dog, the kids missed it, and the parents thought this might help-- maybe they used to go there with their dog. Or it could be the parents were thinking of getting a dog, and they wanted to see how their children reacted in an environment like a dog park, because such things would be in their future if they got a dog.
Or maybe they wanted some place to teach their children not to touch strange dogs. Stand still, wait for a friendly dog to come to you, then politely ask the owner if you can pet it. Kids do need to learn that.
Frankly, if a dog is aggressive enough to charge a child who is standing still, and bite it, that dog will probably hurt another dog as well.
There are probably better ways to go about that-- like picking a time when there are only a couple of dogs at the park, and then asking the owners if they mind, rather than showing up at a peak time.
But they might have had a reason other than “We’re taxpayers.” If they show up in two weeks with a puppy-- or better yet, a shelter rescue, then it will seem perfectly reasonable.
I have no problem with non-dog owners at dog parks. I have a problem with people who do not know how to interact with dogs at a dog park, and if you don’t own a dog, you likely don’t know how to interact properly. Especially a child.
When my dog is at the park with other dogs, I am always watching her, but she may be on the other side of the enclosure, much farther than I could easily intervene. I know most of the other dog owners, and we have socialized our dogs and made sure they get along.
Throw a bunch of kids running around in that mix means that I need to keep my dog close enough to me that I can intervene should something happen. I don’t think anything would even if the kids were yanking at and punching her, but the stakes are high enough when involving children that I would take no chances. (And it would be her that paid the ultimate penalty should some 4 year old manage to startle or frighten her into doing something she never would otherwise do.) That defeats the entire point of the dog-park, letting them run around off leash and with each other.
Of course, I go much less often now after last year when someone decided that dog treats with needles in them should be added to the dog-park.
A dog park is a park where dogs are allowed of the leash, it isn’t for the exclusive use of dog owners, and may people who go there with their dogs are likely to take small children along too. Many people have dogs largely because they have children. If your dog is not safe around children, you should not be letting it off the leash anywhere, and should probably be keeping it muzzled.
It depends a lot on the details of the situation. A lot of dog parks have some benches and such outside the fence, where people can sit and hang out. I have no problem with someone bringing their small children to sit on those benches and watch the doggies, and think anyone who would try to order them out is a flaming asshole. But it seems like the Mom telling the story and the OP would have both mentioned that detail if that’s what happened, so I have to think it’s far more likely that the kids were inside the fence.
And that puts Mom squarely in the wrong. My lab mix is just over knee-tall and adores children, and we have to practice constant vigilance when children in that age range come over to make sure she doesn’t knock them over or scratch them trying to shake hands or try to flea-groom them or lick them in the eyeball, and to make sure they don’t poke her in the eyeball or pull her ears or tail* or any of the other things that are liable to happen when little kids and mid-size dogs get together. And that’s with one child and one very child-friendly dog. Three kids and lord only knows how many dogs? There is no physical way to adequately supervise that situation.
*I’m 98% sure Dolly wouldn’t try to nip one even if they did accidentally hurt her…but she’s a dog. It’s always a possibility, even if it’s a really remote possibility. Besides, toddler fingernails can be really nasty, and I don’t want her having a corneal abrasion made with something like that. Cornea issues are terribly painful, and wounds made with something dirty can get really ugly.
I don’t get to the dog park now as much as I used to, but in the days when I was a daily dog park user, children being there were not usually a problem, if they were well supervised by their parents.
I don’t think dog bites are the biggest danger - most dogs that go to dog parks are pretty friendly, though I do think it far more likely that a small child will get slammed into and knocked down by playing dogs. Dogs get running and wrestling with each other and I’ve seen full grown adults swept off their feet. I also think a young, overly friendly dog who hasn’t learned to greet humans politely and is full of love and kisses for a small face height human could easily overwhelm and upset a child.
I think the guy who shouted at the mother probably handled it badly, but it also sounds like she was there because she had a right to be there and wasn’t going to let anyone tell her otherwise.
It’s right up there with the people who used to bring picnics and sit near dog hill in High Park and then get bent out of shape because dogs were bothering them. Hundreds of acres of parkland that dogs must be leashed and picnickers chose the small area allowed for offleash dogs. Sure they have every right to be there and not be molested by dogs, but it’s a bit asshole-ish to assert that right when there are easy alternatives.
I agree with this. Who is in the wrong depends on how the mother and children were acting. Were all the kids in their strollers, or otherwise sticking close to mom? Did they let the dogs approach them and sniff, and then pet the dogs? If the kids were under control and not running around and not bothering the dogs, then it seems a little strange for them to be there, but not terrible.
However, it seems like it would be difficult for a mother to keep multiple small children under control at a dog park. Kids like to run around and like to pet and play with dogs, and aren’t always good at knowing how to behave with dogs. If the kids were running around and bothering the dogs, then the family was in the wrong.
But the dog owner could have maybe handled it better. Yelling the initial “Hey, stop bothering that dog!” would be okay, but then he or she should have talked with the mother about how it’s not safe to have multiple small children running around a dog park. They can watch the dogs running around from the safety of outside the fence, but shouldn’t come into the park until they know how to behave around dogs. The mother might still have been angry and/or defensive, but maybe that would have gotten through to her.
Gut response: a dog park is mainly for dogs. You can’t treat it like a normal park. You can maybe take one small child there if you have a dog, or even if you don’t have a dog but the ordinances permit it, but you have to keep an eye on your small child even more than you would in a normal park, because there is a higher likelihood of people trying to train their dogs to go off-leash, get used to people, etc. You have to give them a chance to do that. The dogs have priority over the children. The owners have taken them to the dog park for a reason.
Dogs that behave well with kids may have learnt that in steps, including being off-leash in a dog park.
More detailed response: three very young children would extremely difficult for even two parents to control in a dog park. Very young children aren’t that good with strange dogs, even if they’re fine with dogs at home; they might know that Sparky loves it when they run away holding a ball, but not understand that some other dogs will go after the ball and nip their hand to get it. Non-Sparky could end up being killed for this, so this is not trivial. The dog owner was wise to warn the mother to stay away.
If you have just one child per adult, or more adults per child, you can at least keep an eye on that sort of behaviour. This woman had too many kids with her to do that.
The law may be on your friend’s side, but reality isn’t. If she goes to the dog park again with three tiny kids - law on her side, and all - she might well end up with at least one of them hurt. There are no jaywalking laws here but that doesn’t mean the law will bring me back to life if I walk in front of fast-moving traffic that was well-signposted before I got there.
I agree that more details would be good. If it’s just a dog park, designed just for walking dogs or letting dogs play off-leash, the mom is irresponsible for taking her kids (assuming that they were in the area with the dogs). However, if it’s an open space created for other purposes as well, the owner of said dog is a jackass for being pissed that there are kids present.
That said, I don’t see myself taking my kids to a dog park. Both of them are scared of dogs and you just don’t know how dogs will behave with anyone, least of all little kids, who are also unpredictable and well known for doing some pretty damn stupid stuff (my son used to try to ride our cat like a horse if I wasn’t watching closely enough; thank goodness we had a very patient cat who loved my son to no end despite the attempts to play “horse”).
Two hyperactive three year olds hyped up on pixie sticks wanting to run and wrestle and wreak havoc and a spacey two year old prone to wandering off? Yeah, hard to control, bad scene. A shy four year old and her school friend sitting on a bench watching the dogs and a baby strapped in a stroller asleep? Shouldn’t be an issue.
Everyone has the legal right to be in the park. Dog owners still need to control their aggressive animals. For the youngsters’ health and safety, I’d prefer the mom to find a park with less dog droppings.
But it would physically impossible for one parent to keep an eye on all three kids at once. Two shy four-year-olds might well get up to pet a tiny yorkie puppy then get confident and wander into the range of two dogs play-fighting over a frisbee and get a nip not even intended for them, all in the time it takes you to check if the baby’s diapers need changing. Taking three little kids on your own to any park would be challenging, let alone a dog park. In a regular park, it’s reasonable to expect that all the dogs be good with kids, or on a leash, but not in a dog park.
Don’t fall into this new-mother children-are-more-special-than-anything trap. I’m a parent, and I would not have taken three extremely well-behaved under-fives to a dog park because that’s not what a dog park is for. It’s not a zoo; in a zoo, the animals are in cages.
It doesn’t say in the OP, but I was wondering if the woman and her kids were just “at” the dog-park or if she actually tried to take her kids into the enclosed no-leash area with the dogs.
These are two very different things.
If the former then she’s in the right.
The latter, then yea I’d tell her to get the hell out. (plus she’s a fucking idiot!)