By Jill Sherer Murray for WebVet
A few weeks ago, I was walking my two dogs in the public park close to our house, when from out a nowhere, a Yorkshire terrier came running at us like a speeding fur-covered bullet. I stood there, a leash with a barking and lunging dog in each hand, feeling as if a meteor was about to crash into the earth and I was helpless to stop it.
It was a horrible experience, and fortunately, it didn’t lead to any casualties. It did leave me shaking, cursing the Yorkie’s owner, and wondering how some people can be so careless in a public park with their animals.
That’s because it’s not the first time I’ve seen a dog owner behave irresponsibly (i.e., walking a dog off leash, leaving dog poop in the grass, letting tenuous dogs get close to small children, etc.) in a public park.
And yet, unlike parks designated for dogs only, public parks designed for mass consumption require owners and their dogs to meet a different set of criteria -- one that allows for a peaceful co-existence between humans and animals. Following are six suggestions for meeting it.
#1: Leash your dog
Always leash your dog when walking in a public park. Because leash laws aside:
- Not everybody is a dog lover or relishes an errant dog -- especially if they’re with small children.
- Even dog lovers don’t always want to encounter a dog they know nothing about.
- It’s bad for a dog that’s on leash to engage with a dog.
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