Dog parks

[speedog]

Now I don't own a dog, never have and probably won't ever and that despite being in the pet industry for the past seven years but dog parks are always a hotly debated item when they come up for discussion in the public realm.

In these forums, urbanization and densification are two very heavily supported ideals and a dog park would certainly fly in the face of that - an undeveloped piece of land that is utilized by a small subset of our population. I can look just outside of my very low-density community towards Cambrian Heights and see that the Queens Park dog park is a very under-utilized outdoor space but dog owners want to be able to have somewhere that their dogs can run free and so, dog parks we have.

So why is this worthy of discussion - well, a recent item in the Calgary Herald is once again showing how contentious this issue is...

Doggone shame

I moved back to Calgary two years ago after 26 years in Edmonton. I moved close to River Park so I could walk my dog off leash. Now, they have cut my dog walk park in half; first by a fence all across the park and now with signs indicating that the north end of the park, which has been offleash for decades, is now on leash.

I am informed that should my dog be found offleash in the north end of the park, it will be considered running at large and I will be fined $100. When I called the parks department, they referred me to the website which said the city received a memo from a "group of citizens" who requested maintenance and long-term planning in River Park. Who are these citizens who can take away the off-leash park after all these years? The only people using the north end of the park have dogs.

Calgary is not getting any smaller and the number of dogs in River Park is getting larger. It doesn't make any sense to confine the dogs to a smaller area. It is a deep pleasure to go for an offleash walk with your dog. There are so few places to do it and so many parks for people who do not have dogs. Why take our park away?

Victoria Tirmizi

Calgary

Of note, there are actually no off leash dog parks south of Fish Creek and west of the Bow River in Calgary. Yes, everyone will point to the space between the EB and WB lanes of the 22X on the north side of Spruce Meadows but people need to realize that is provincial land leased back to Spruce Meadows who have been kind enough to allow dog owners free use of that area. Once the ring road goes through,dog owners can say good bye to that space. Now there are rumours of a new city owned off leash area being developed south of the 22X and east of MacLeod Trail but it still isn't up and running as far as I'm aware. Noting all of this and being the owner of a small, independent pet store (don't sell animals) in that deep SW part of the city, I called the city to find out what it takes to get an off leash dog area built and they said the request has to come from a community association - this means that CA's in the more established areas like Midnapore, Shawnessy, Millrise and even Sundance have never seen the need for an off leash dog park within their boundaries.

Another example I can provide that shows the influence a CA can have would be the Queens Park off leash area in the NW - that used to be just an open space fenced on two sides and it was pristine prairie some ten years ago. This I know because I live in the area and used to quite enjoy that little undisturbed piece of land - prairie crocuses are very finicky about where they'll grow and that bit of inner-city prairie was on area they thrived. Then the city came along and fully fenced that area in for use as an off leash dog park - within two years the pristine prairie land that was there was destroyed and mostly due to the amazing numbers of dog owners who were now using that off leash park - people were driving from all quadrants off the city and some from as far as Strathmore (I don't get that) to use that fully fenced off leash area. On street parking became a huge issue and the Cambrian Heights CA started flexing their muscles and soon enough one fence was removed and the park almost immediately fell into disuse as people now had to look after their dogs because it wasn't fully fenced. So now it's back to what is was, an undeveloped green space that is infrequently used by a few area dog owners but an area that is now devoid of the original natural prairie vegetation as the CoC plowed and reseeded the whole area in non-native grasses because of the un-natural heavy use it had endured once it was converted to a fully fenced off leash area.

With respect to the above item from the Calgary Herald, I would suspect which ever CA is near the River Park area probably had some influence on what happened there - never the less, I don't know how many of the active users in these forums are dog owners but for those of you who are or who just have an opinion, what's your thoughts on dog parks over all and also this River Park issue as well.

[Full Mountain]

So here's the other side to this, we have a park that's fenced in for other reasons being beside a collector road being one. And it has become a defacto dog park that dog owners leave in a mess (i.e. not picking up after them) that results in the rest of the community not wanting/being able to use the park as it was intended.

I get that it's likely a minority of pet owners that don't pick up after their pets, but this is likely why some of them get closed. As well the other issue with off leash parks is uncontrolled dogs, the one at the end of Southland is horrible for this with the pathway that goes through there, nearly hit a pack of dogs there once.

[speedog]

So on topic, do off leash dog parks have a place in Calgary's urban and increasingly denser inner-city or almost inner-city areas? River Park (referenced in the Herald article above) is certainly not in suburbia by any means but it is certainly not lands that were going to be developed either. That said, is it a big deal to take land away from an established off leash area in a community (Altadore) that will get more dense in the future?

[H.E.Pennypacker]

River Park is huge, I go down there fairly often and didn't even notice they cut the north side off for off-leash use (would explain the new path/fence up there) ... That portion of the park isn't used nearly as much as the south/central portion of it

As a dog owner in the core of the City I think there is a place for them .. Particularly as the core grows more dense, a good chunk of owners (like myself) don't have a yard for the dog to free run around ... I'm able to walk to a dog park 10-15 minutes away daily and let him run around ... I don't think they should have to occupy large sections of prime land, however they can be designed in unique spaces between properties, particularly along pathways

[Ramsayfarian]

Originally Posted by H.E.Pennypacker

River Park is huge, I go down there fairly often and didn't even notice they cut the north side off for off-leash use (would explain the new path/fence up there) ... That portion of the park isn't used nearly as much as the south/central portion of it

As a dog owner in the core of the City I think there is a place for them .. Particularly as the core grows more dense, a good chunk of owners (like myself) don't have a yard for the dog to free run around ... I'm able to walk to a dog park 10-15 minutes away daily and let him run around ... I don't think they should have to occupy large sections of prime land, however they can be designed in unique spaces between properties, particularly along pathways

I was going to say the same thing, River Park is massive. As I'm currently dogless, I haven't been there in ages, so I have no idea where the new fence is, but I'm guessing it's probably where it dips down a bit. If that's the case, then there's still plenty of park left and the person whining should really STFU. If if they cut the park in half, it's still a very large dog park.