Cassie Leigh - Dog Park Basics

Growing up we always had dogs, but it never even occurred to us to take them to a dog park. Honestly, I'm not even sure dog parks existed back then. They certainly didn't exist in the town of a hundred people I started out in. Maybe they existed somewhere when I was older and living in a larger metropolitan area, but, if they did, I didn't know about it.

And we certainly didn't take our dogs there.

Our dogs were house dogs for the most part. We usually had two or three the whole time I was growing up and they spent their days in the house and in the yard. That's just the way it was and I never questioned it.

I might occasionally take one for a walk in the nearby park, but that was taking her on-leash with me when I went for a walk. It wasn't about finding a place for her to play and let off some steam.

Fast-forward twenty years and I'm well into adulthood and haven't had a dog that whole time and I end up with a puppy I hadn't planned on owning. (Long story, short: My mom bought a puppy for herself. Her older dog attacked the puppy two days later. Mom offered me the pup or said she'd have to take it back. I took the puppy and ended up changing my life completely as a result.)

So, there I was. New puppy with lots of energy and living in an apartment. Now, at first, I just walked the pup around the apartment complex and took her to a neighboring sports facility with four big soccer fields side-by-side where, during the day, she could run around off-leash. I also took her to PetSmart once or twice a week for a few hours so she could play with other puppies.

(Once she was old enough for that to be safe. It's not safe for a new puppy to be near a lot of other dogs until it has most of its shots. That includes day care and the dog park.)

I quickly realized that pup loved the outdoors and needed a chance to really run around somewhere. Walking on leash with me just wasn't enough no matter how long the walk. (And pup liked EPIC walks sometimes. Like that one time in the middle of a snowstorm that shut down the entire city when we were outside for a good hour and a halfGood times.)

It really hit home for me when we moved to the Washington, DC area and were living in Crystal City where it's mostly busy streets and lots of traffic. (My old apartment was full of large grassy courtyards. My DC apartment? Not so much. There was a four foot by twenty foot area around the side of the building where I could take the pup to do her business, but otherwise we had to walk about eight blocks to get to a park-like area. Even then, it was not somewhere I could just let her run loose. Although people did and I sometimes did. It was always a heart attack moment, though, worrying she'd go the other direction and run across four lanes of traffic.)

(Something she did at least twice after slipping out of her collar)

So, anyway. There we were in DC. I had a six-month-old, energetic puppy who wanted to walk for an hour or so each time we left the building. And who wasn't getting as much puppy play time as she should've been. (Although we did occasionally have a little play session in the lobby with one of her puppy friends. Something that amused the front desk staff, fortunately, but didn't really please the other residents in the building.)

Enter the dog park.

There were tons of them in the DC area. Well, okay, maybe not tons. But a good ten or fifteen that were within a half hour's drive.

Pup and I set out to explore most of them. We developed our favorites, like Glencarlyn, and we also developed our never-go-there-agains. (There were many, unfortunately. Mostly because of the bad vibe I'd get when I took the pup there. No matter how cute your puppy is, when she's sixty-five pounds plus there will always be a few haters out there. And some people are just very territorial about their park like it was built especially for them.)

When we returned to Colorado we actually moved into a house with a yard, but

It wasn't enough for the pup. Oh, sure, she'll take what you give her. If I'd decided she was never leaving the confines of the yard ever again, she would've probably accepted it with her quiet little pout and sad eyes and still given me puppy kisses and occasionally let me get close enough to snuggle with. But she would've been sad and missed getting to run around and swim and play with other dogs.

So, we set out to see what was around here. Seems to me there are fewer options in Colorado than there were in DC, which is interesting because I think Colorado is more dog-friendly in general than DC was. (At least in our experience.)

But we've tried out a handful of places and found two favorites. One nearby that we can go to daily and one about forty minutes away that I really like but can't be a daily trip for us.

Along the way I've developed some impressions and opinions about dog parks, the types of people that go there, and the things you should keep in mind when taking your dog to one. That's what the rest of this book is about. It's a general guide to taking your dog to the dog park.

Do you NEED it? No. You can do what I did and just show up at each dog park and wing it. Will it help, though? I certainly hope so or I wouldn't have bothered to write it.

It's a practical guide, by the way. Maybe someday I'll write a book of all my weird encounters at various dog parks (some of those did sneak their way in), but for now I just want to share what I've learned.

So, let's talk dog parks, shall we?

The first thing you have to realize is that not all dog parks are the same. They can range from small barren areas surrounded by a chain-metal fence to hundreds of acres of untamed wilderness that's only partially fenced. And whether a particular park actually works for you and your dog will very much depend on you, your dog, and what you're hoping to get out of the experience.

It's also very dependent on the other people and dogs that are there when you go. Which means you can have a great experience at a park one time and a horrible experience the next time.

This just happened to me and the pup at the park we go to almost daily. There were a lot of dogs that aren't normally there because it was a weekend and, I don't know, maybe something was in the air, but we ran into two dog fights. Not serious ones, but serious enough to not be enjoyable. (Pup has a bad habit of running towards a dog fight instead of away from itLike she can somehow get everyone to just get along if she tries hard enough.)

The first thing you should do when you go to any new dog park, is keep your eyes open to see what the place is like. Is it clean? What type of dogs are there? How do the owners behave?

I've been to some parks that I knew I'd never go back to after one visit. There was one that was basically sand surrounded by a fence. The dogs and owners were fine, but the pup came away covered in a fine layer of grit and there was really nothing there for her to do. It just wasn't nice.