But still, if your vegetables don’t behave well around children, you probably shouldn’t bring them to the vegetable park. You never know how they might react if poorly-supervised kids try to pick their flowers or pull on their leaves.
You should read more about the (lack of) rights dog owners have any time there is a dog/child clash. If the kid that got knocked down shows any blood/bruising, many times the parent demands the dog be put down because it is “vicious and bit little Timmy for no reason”, and the owner will have almost no recourse. Many of the dogs in the local kill shelter are there because they grew up with few manners and knocked over one too many kids.
Any clash between kids and dogs, the dogs will lose.
Yeah, that’s good parenting. Always ask the owner first and don’t head into a dog park when you have more kids than hands.
Without reading any other responses … in our city dog parks, you must have a pass card to get in, so you must be a paying member of the park to enter. Children under 12 are not allowed in at all. I think the parents with kids are 100% in the wrong.
We have no idea what the mother in the OP was like. For all we know, the “three kids” were a pair of sleeping newborn twins securely strapped into a four-foot-high mega-stroller and a timid three year old. We do not know if the kids were running wild, hanging out in a quiet corner of the park waiting for people to approach, or sitting on a bench observing. We do not know if the park was a busy and chaotic German Shepard brawl, or if it was a quiet day with a couple of old ladies walking their chihuahuas and wiener dogs. We just do not have enough details to make guesses about how they were behaving. I would imagine most parents would be on the cautious side, but there are all kinds of people out there.
Some parents are bad parents. Some dog owner are also bad dog owners, and some dog owners (well, some people) hate kids and feel that they are owed a life where they are never in the presence of children (Curlcoat, Curlcoat, Curlcoat), and will act utterly insane if they think someone else’s “crotch spawn” is being “imposed” on them by showing up at a restaurant or park or whatever. I don’t know if that’s what is happening here, but we’ve certainly seen it plenty often on this board. I don’t think it’s impossible that the parent was actually in control and everything was fine, and the man just took offense to their presence and made a scene.
The mom cares more about being right than the safety of her own children. It shouldn’t matter if she has the right to be in a place that is demonstrably dangerous for young children. If the dogs could be perfectly well-behaved to the point of not even accidentally running into children, there would be no reason to have to take them to an offleash park. You’d just leave them offleash all the time.
I don’t understand the Dopers here who have such completely unreasonable expectations for dogs. It takes a lot of work to train a larger dog to be safe around your own small children, let alone every other small child in the world. And to expect them to be able to handle it in an unusual situation with so much other stimulation? It’s just not possible that every single dog in the park is going to be that well-trained. And the only way the owners how trained their dog is is when something bad happens.
No, if it were that clear cut, we’d have heard about it. This isn’t some situation where one side has to keep quiet. What you are doing is just moving the goalposts so that you don’t have to admit that your response was unreasonable. You are the one making up more and more information so that you can be right. We are taking the information as given. This is the type of woman who got all upset about her rights, and told a dog owner not to bring his dog to the dog park. She’s bringing her kids to a park they have no reason to be at. There’s just no reason to side with her.
If more information comes, we are free to change our minds. But all we have right now is the information in the OP, and that’s what we are judging by. You have instead decided that the dog person must be in the wrong and are making up scenarios where that would be true.
Not really. If you put the kids in the fenced off section, it’s the same as taking them to a separate dog-only park. If they aren’t in the fenced off section, they aren’t actually in the off-leash dog park.
The thing is, we are told specifically that it’s off-leash. As long as that is the case, it is more reasonable to think it is a fenced off park, and thus dog-only. A park where the general public can hang out would not be safe for off-leash dogs. The city would just be inviting trouble to explicitly allow off-leash dogs in a park designed for everyone.
Wow. Just wow. I knew that having kids changed people, but holy cow.
Which of these statements do you disagree with?
- We do not have the details of this incident. (IIRC, the OP is a friend of the mom’s husband, so we are getting this third hand)
- There are some wacky people out there who strongly dislike encountering children in public, and may even become irate about it.
- There are circumstances, however far fetched, where the mothers actions would not be that bad.
I don’t know. This could be a worst case scenario of wild toddlers running in packs taunting hulking, barely trained curs while mom plays Candy Crush on the other side of the park. In that case , it’s clearly questionable parenting. But I can also picture situations where it could be perfectly fine.
But in any scenario, if someone is within the bounds of the law and obeying all posted rules, random citizens have no right to order them to leave a public facility. I don’t like homeless people in the public library, but I can’t walk around saying my rowdy fifteen year old cousin doesn’t like bums, so they’d be wise to leave. If the dog walker wants exclusive use of the park, he needs to work with the city to develop rules to that effect, which is apparently perfectly possible.
even sven, you’re right we do not have all the details. But when they are lacking, until we get more information, we have to go with what we have. And if we have to fill in, we go with “most common situations” versus “less common situations”. And it is more common that a single person with three young kids is not strictly supervising all three of them, because one of them is going at any point require more attention than the other two. This is more likely than having three extremely well-behaved toddlers. And even well-behaved and quiet toddlers can get into trouble. I know because I was one and I still almost sliced my finger off and got 4 stitches.
Scenarios like what you suggested are less likely, even approaching zebras, not horses. Could they happen? Yes. Are they the most common, with the information that was given? No, they are not. So in cases like this, we should consider common things first before going for the uncommon.
Also, your last paragraph is not a good comparison. Public library rules do not exclude homeless people from using the library. The dog park in this case explicitly states that small children have to be under strict adult supervision. And again, it is unlikely that three young kids and one adult constituted “strict adult supervision”.
I logged into Facebook this morning and one of my friends had posted a series videos of animals knocking down small children. Not - in most cases, aggressively - but in the “I’m playing, and - oops - was there a child there” way. Or the “I’m playing - do you want to play too” sort of way. And I thought of this thread.
One of the dog parks near us has a big dog play area and a small dog play area - so the small dogs don’t get hurt by the bigger dogs.
:smack:
I specificially posted upthread the official rules of this particular “Dog Park”, which even you now admit is in fact a “dog park”, that expressly make it clear that the onus is on DOG OWNERS to respect “other users” of the space - meaning, parents with children, etc.
My point - and I’m amazed at how contriversial it is proving, in the face of clear evidence - was that “dog parks” VARY WIDELY, from those in which the onus is clearly on the dog owners to share the space with others - such as young children - to those in which the onus is on others to conform to the requirements of dog owners. They are not all the same.
You can see the difference in the officially-posted rules. Assuming the dog park described by the OP was “Fort Woof”, the rules clearly state it was the latter type - parents must “closely supervise” their kids. Not, mind you, that kids were forbidden (which they are in some dog parks). However, this fact makes it more likely* that the parent was in the wrong - while if she was in High Park Dog Park, it would be more likely (in fact certain) that the dog owner was wrong.
*Point taken that we don’t know whether she was in fact “supervising” her kids.
I posted the rules for this particular “Dog Park” upthread. They make it clear that, despite your reasoning, the city has done exactly that - allowed off-leashed dogs in a place that is designated for everyone.
For your benefit, I repost:
[emphasis added]
Note the difference between the rules here and those for other “dog parks”, like Fort Woof, that expressly state “no kids unless closely supervised”. The onus here is on the dog owners.
This also makes sense if you know the park - the off-leash areas are traversed by walking paths and even roads, and even has an ice-cream stand!
Somehow, the city has failed to be inundated with liability claims, even though reading this thread one would expect that having a multi-use park was the height of insanity, and that all kids ought to be wrapped in bubble wrap at all times … 
I honestly don’t understand why they’d call it a dog park if it’s actually a general use park, like you’re saying now. It doesn’t seem to fit any of the criteria of a dog park, in that it’s not primarily for dogs. Dogs are usually allowed in parks - they’re usually barred from some fenced-off bits with kids’ play equipment, and you get the occasional very small park that bars dogs altogether, but generally dogs are allowed in parks, so why is this park that dogs are allowed in called a “dog park?” It’s just what I’d call “a park.”
You might as well call it an “old people’s park,” then be astonished when people expect the park to be specifically for old people rather than just a park old people go to, like they do to parks everywhere.
If that’s your main experience of “dog parks” then I can see why you’d be confused, but it’s an odd one.
Many times there is no rule against someone doing something that no one has thought to forbid because no reasonable person would do it. Then an unreasonable person or two comes along and, after picking their jaws up off the floor, the folks in authority make another rule or two. A few assholes later, and you have things like no one over eleven allowed to play in this area. Because the assholes really will say things like “you can’t stop me - there’s no rule against it - if it was wrong, there’d be a rule.”
Wrong. Red herring. Preschools are a controlled environment. The kids are locked in and most dangers have been removed. Even there, the recommended ratio is one adult to three or four children (depending on exact age). In a preschool setting, if one adult is distracted by a single child, the other adults pick up the slack watching the group in general.
In a preschool setting, there are also many toys that can be used to distract a child. They aren’t in a setting where the most interesting thing in sight are dogs.
I’ve done the two hands/three kids thing. You carry the youngest, hold the hand of the middle, and keep a conversation going with the oldest. You stay on-task and don’t loiter. You don’t go to stores that have no shopping carts. If your attention flags, someone will be eating a cigarette butt - best case. You go to quiet parks with interesting play equipment.
Amen. We also don’t know whether Go Away Guy was reasonable. How their conversation started. Whether he told her to go away or told her that she shouldn’t be there. Whether the husband called the right department in the City. Or what “doesn’t like children” means relative to Guy’s dog.
I’ve learned that there is are wider differences in dog parks than I had suspected. That’s something, I guess.
I kind of miss the days when people didn’t think the fact that there’s no rule against doing something meant it was OK to do it even if it meant it couldn’t be used for it’s intended purpose.
Maybe you wouldn't do this, maybe no one in your area would do this but there are places where if you allowed people to use the basketball courts for other purposes, people might never get to play basketball. Or where if those over eleven were allowed to play in the playground, those under eleven would never get to play there.(The one time I vividly remember kids over 11 at the playground they were riding bikes all over the playground equipment making it unusable by the smaller kids) A completely unrelated example of what I'm talking about- I live across the street from a park. In addition to a playground and basketball courts, there is an open paved area ( maybe 100 ft x 200 ft) with no restriction on activities. From the time I moved in (25 years ago) until a few years ago, that area has been used at various times by kids playing softball , roller skating, little kids learning to ride bikes , and older people doing tai chi, etc. Suddenly a large group of people (at least 50-60) who seemed to be associated with car services all over Queens starting showing up early every Saturday and Sunday to play volleyball until dark. Every nice weekend for the next three years. Nowhere in the neighborhood for kids to bike or skate or for the people to do tai chi. I have no idea why this group wanted to place volleyball in this specific space when there is a 165 acre park with actual volleyball courts a half mile away- but they did. And as there were no restrictions on that area, they were able to basically take it over. Which is fine, because again, there were no restrictions. But I can see why some areas do have restrictions - people wanting to play basketball would have had some recourse if those volleyball games had been on basketball courts that were restricted to playing basketball.
I believe this is the description of the park in the OP:
Clearly meant for dogs to play off leash- not for children. If it’s not already restricted - to dogs and their owners, no children under 12, only people who signed waivers of liability allowed in etc - it will be restricted or closed just as soon as the inevitable idiot lets their 2 year old play in the big dog section and the two year old gets knocked down by a couple of Golden Retrievers while the parent is staring at their phone. Because after all, there’s no rule that says he or she can’t do that.
Actually, we know how old the kids are, at least. Their ages were mentioned by the OP in a pit thread, in a post about their behavior. And talked about Mom’s parenting style too, ftr.
Yeah…Maybe the OP didn’t want to poison the well by mentioning that in this thread, but they aren’t the type of small children, or mom overseeing them, **I’d **trust to be in an unleashed dog park…
Well… based on that, it seems they at least do act like normal toddlers, assuming young kids will, at some point, behave in ways that are embarrassing to accompanying adults in public.
But it also tells me that those are kids that are likely not quiet and attentive in a dog park, and would be better served by going to the local kids park, with the jungle gyms, and run around until they’re exhausted. At the very least, the parent would need to keep an eye on the youngest most of the time, and that leaves the other two without supervision.
The youngest two - two and a half is high danger age if your kid is “that kind of kid” There are toddlers who at two and a half are stuck to your side, shy in public - those well behaved children we dream of having where if they are yours you look at the other kind think its parenting (its not, I had one of each) - and then there are the ones that run from you giggling, who play hide and seek in the store under the racks the moment your back is turned putting you on the verge of a Code Adam, and who scale the kitchen cupboards like a cat.