And it will be the dogs/dogs’ owners who will be held at fault.
I don’t take my dog to dog parks for this reason, among others. My dog doesn’t like kids either, so I make sure I don’t take her any place where there are pack of wild children roaming around.
That said, it seems lazy to me: take your kids to a dog park instead of taking on the responsibility for getting a dog. I don’t think much of it, but I’m well aware that, in our society (well, all of them really) people come before dogs. So my dog and I will continue to go to places like the cemetery where she can run around (leashed – I never let her off leash) freely without being stalked by little kids who don’t understand doggy body language. (If I see that a funeral is set up, we avoid that part of the cemetery. Again, living humans come before dogs. But most of the time, the cemetery is the perfect place to walk the dog.)
I think some people may not really know what a “dog run” is. I’d never seen one before I moved here. They can be really chaotic places. Lots of dust flying. Lots of dogs running all over the place. Sometimes owners are out there with them, throwing balls and whatnot. Other times, owners are sitting over on the benches, not paying attention.
I can’t imagine letting one small child loose in one, let alone THREE. That means that when you’re rushing to the aide of Toddler 1 when she gets knocked over by the frisky Golden Retriever, you aren’t paying attention to Toddler 2, who is one tail-pull away from being nipped by a grouchy poodle or Toddler 3, who over in the corner making mud pies with some brown squishy stuff he just found. I try not to judge parents, but sorry, that’s just plain stupidity right there.
There is a good point here that dog parks vary. The image I have in my head are the little urban dog corners we have around here, that offer benches, shade and a place to poop, but aren’t any place that’s going to get too wild.
Lazy? We live three people to a one bedroom apartment. It’s not lazy, it’s responsible. I take my little bug to PetSmart to look at the animals (from a controlled distance) and that’s as close to having a pet as we can responsibly get at this time.
And when I say dust, I mean it. A perpetual cloud of it hangs in the air above the dog run just around the corner from me. It’s a popular spot. I never see little kids hanging out there. Just lots doggies and their owners.
I’m gonna side with dog guy on this one. Who knows what kind of disgusting parasites and diseases your nasty rugrats have. Nowadays, we don’t even know if your kids had all their shots. Unless they’re leashed, they might try to bite me or my dog too. Also, one of the rules at my dog park is “All dogs must be under voice command at all times.” How many kids under 5 can do that?
If the OP meant an area of a park that dogs often go in, why would he have called it a dog park? Why would any dog owner think they could tell a parent to get out of a general use park? It’d be a complete non-debate, with the dog owner being wrong. And calling it a dog park would be misleading.
I think that both parties are probably at least slightly mentally unstable. Mom shouldn’t have been bringing three under-fives to a dog park by herself, and the dog owner shouldn’t have brought a dog that is unstable around children to a public place where children could easily be hurt. Legally I agree with everyone else here - the mother is in the right, but still remarkably weird. To be honest, I’m wary of dog parks in general, as my dog has been harmed by aggressive dogs there in the past, so to me, treating it like a playground is . . . well, not the greatest idea.
This is about it. I have been clipped pretty hard by dogs running full blast at the dog park, not sure how that would have ended if I was a 3 yr old.
That said, a dog that “doesn’t like kids” is not one that should be at the off leash park, imho. The dog is just as likely to “not like puppies/small dogs”.
My own opinion is that both parties share 50% of the blame on this. The guy with a dog that doesn’t do well with kids shouldn’t bring his dog there, and the woman shouldn’t bring kids to an area where they may be smashed into at high speed or bitten if they harrass an unknown dog.
Here in San Diego we have a few dog beaches and I see this same type of issue a lot. The Mom with the young child wearing shorts and no shoes (and currently non-soaked clothes) is in water just a few inches deep, and a pack of dogs playing with each other, or a dog chasing a ball, hauls ass and plows into the kid, knocking them into the water resulting in wet clothes, a crying child, and an outraged mother. In this case though, the dog owner apologizes and the Mom leaves in a huff. Thankfully, it is a self correcting problem and the parents learn pretty fast they should not be bringing their kids there.
These rules are specific to High Park, which is fenced. It’s listed as such on your linked website.
The “CDW/FEN” notation means that commercial dog walkers are allowed and it is fenced.
However, people (including people with kids) walk through it all the time, to get to different parts of the park.
Allowing one’s kids to approach/interact with a strange dog without the dog owner’s permission isn’t a good idea, I fully agree. But the notion that kids aren’t welcome in a substantial area or the park is a non-starter, at least in this city. No-one has a monopoly on the use of the park; at least, according to the officially-posted rules. I have never heard of an epidemic of kid-maulings in High Park (which contains a famous playground and a mini-zoo, so it attracts lots of kids - many of whom, as mentioned, get to these attractions by walking through the fenced area).
Again maybe other places do it differently, I can’t say. but it seems reasonable to me that if everyone can use the park, apparently without major problems as long as the above-noted rules are followed, everyone should be allowed to use the park.
Clearly, leash-free, fenced dog parks vary widely. In some, kids are expected and Okay, as in High Park. In others, they are not, as in the Houston dog park.
My current dog is a retired guide dog breeder, who comes from generations of dogs bred to be non-aggressive. Any other dog can be aggressive if a little kid sticks his fingers up their noses or something. And dogs being playful can look aggressive to someone not familiar with dog behavior. I didn’t have a dog from when I was five to 45, and I had no idea of what dogs were saying when I interacted with them. Now I do know behavior that used to make me nervous doesn’t bother me at all. One of the things about a dog park containing only dog owners is that everyone there knows how to react.
Tons of people let their dogs run in the field of the school across the street from me. I only know of two problems in 15 years. Dogs run up to me all the time, but they are being friendly, not aggressive - but a little kid might not know the difference.
Are you sure the parks you are talking about are even meant for dogs? I’m sure that there are dog owners there, but you can hardly call it a dog park if it’s not meant for dogs. What you describe sounds to me like a “pocket park” (a very small park , possibly as small as a single 20ft wide lot ) or what NYC calls “Greenstreets” - unused formerly paved areas ( wide medians, funny bends in the road) converted to greenspace which sometimes have benches. They’re barely even big enough to let a dog run around unleashed.
If someone yelled at kids outside the fence he’d be a dick. Even if the kids stuck fingers inside the fence, not a good idea, it is not likely anything will happen. But I can’t imagine that’s the situation here.
Yllaria has it right. Dogs, especially puppies, will play with each other in ways that would seem aggressive if they did it with children. Kids are not going to react the way a dog would expect them to react when expressing dominance.
Maybe little kids in my neighborhood are smarter because they always ask my permission to pet my dog. But even a sweet Golden Retriever eager to meet a kid won’t know that she can knock them down by accident.
The mother is in the wrong, the dog park is not a free babysitter/petting zoo/entertainment facility for her annoying semi sentient DNA packets, the fact that it’s an off leash park makes it even more precarious for larval humanoids…
Heck, when I’m walking Cooper on the beach and a parent with child(ren) approach us, I have to advise them to let me shorten the leash to a minimum and get Cooper to sit first, he’s freindly, very much so, but he’s still a puppy, mentally, and has a tendency to jump if not on a short leash, he could easily knock a young child over in an attempt to be freindly, I let the parent know this before I let the child approach, and for the real youngsters, I actually hold Cooper’s collar and restrain him from being jumpy or pushy
Until I can train him out of this behavior, it’d be irresponsible for me to take him to an off leash park, I am a responsible dog owner, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that the mother exercise the same responsibility with her spawn as well…
It’d be just as irresponsible for her to bring her kids to an OLDP, as it would for me to bring Cooper to one until he’s properly socialized…
I was curious about dog parks in my area (Maryland suburbs of DC). DC has 10 official dog parks and the rules specify that parents must be in control of kids under 16. PG county has two dog parks with no kids under something like 12 allowed. MoCo has a handful and similar rules about kids as DC.
Whatever the rules are, I don’t think preschoolers belong in a dog park except in certain circumstances. I.e., if it’s a family taking their own dog to the park at a time when there are few, if any, other dogs there.
This.
and the added part where if your dumbass takes your kid to the dog park and some rambunctious hundred pound hairball with a cast iron skull plows into your 50 pound precious at a speed just short of sound it is 100% your fucking fault, not the dogs, not the owner of the dogs, Yours.
the real issue here is that you know goddamned well mom would do her best to put the blame on the owner and their dangerous dog and who the hell can afford a lawsuit even if they are right?
I’m on the legal but stupid side. Yes, ideally every dog owner in the off leash dog park should have excellent control over their dog - but am I willing to bet a four year old’s safety that that is the case? Heck, I sometimes regret taking my DOG to the dog park because some of the dogs are aggressive to other dogs and their owners don’t have excellent control.
I wouldn’t yell at them to leave, but I would pull Mom aside and mention that sometimes the dogs here are aggressive and their owners don’t always have excellent control - and that it would only take a moment with little kids for a tragedy to occur.
I also wouldn’t take an aggressive dog, or one who didn’t like children, to an off leash park.