There will not be any pictures in this post for reasons that will soon become obvious.

I’ve been to a dog park before but never with my dog, Lilo. And never in Texas.

Let me preface this by saying that there are real definite differences between “dog culture” in the north and south. In Michigan, it is really difficult to find small or toy breeds to adopt or rescue. They just aren’t available. People seem to take the ownership of these small breeds very seriously and they are hard to come by if not directly from a breeder. They don’t seem to end up in rescue very often. What IS available? Labs and Golden Retrievers by a millions. Here in the south I immediately noticed that there are two breeds of dog: the toy/small breed and the rabid pitbull. That’s what people in the south own, apparently. When we tried to find a Golden Retriever rescue, they actually had very few dogs in need of rescue and the shelters were not overflowing with them at all. It took us about 8 months to finally find The Perfect Dog. Back in Michigan, it probably would have taken 8 hours. I’m definitely thankful for my Lilo - she was worth the long wait, to be sure! Now if I wanted a small breed I could have hooked myself up in a matter of minutes. Same for a scary-ass breed like the pitbull. The sheer number of pitbulls being bred and attempted to be given away or sold is shocking. Every weekend backyard breeders sit in their pickup trucks in empty parking lots and grassy medians with their crates full of killers-in-the-making, trying to offload them while they are still cute (except honestly I think pitbulls aren’t even cute as puppies). In case it isn’t apparent, I think they should be illegal as pets. I think it is unethical to adpot them out or sell them or give them away. I think its irresponsible to put dogs like this into a situation where they will be villainized for doing what they were bred to do. It isn’t fair to the animal, it isn’t safe for the neighborhoods or the children or poor guy who comes to read the water meter! I don’t want them in my neighborhood, I don’t want them at the damned dog park. Ok? Ok.

So today we went to the dog park with Lilo. I thought it would be really fun for her and it would prepare her to be kennelled next month when we are out of town. I didn’t plan really well for this because I failed to consider that if you bring CHILDREN to the dog park, the children need to be above  a certain age (in this case, 9) . But there were a bunch of other 3 year old girls playing inside the dog park so in a moment of sheer stupidity I figured I’d break the rules too and in we all went.

But there were these big dogs. BIG dogs. A rottweiler, a large mixed breed and two - count em TWO - pitbulls along with another bulldog of some sort. And all these tiny little girls running around who were like scooby snacks for these dogs. It freaked me the HELL out. So I held Addison in my arms. Fun.

Then I considered not taking the leash off my dog because really what I wanted to do was run the hell away. But I figured if she was attacked by one of these huge beasts, she would need to run and not be restrained by a leash. So I let her off.

It took me about 5 seconds to realize she didn’t want to be there any more than I did. She was totally freaked out by the dogs. All she wanted to do was hang out with any human willing to make eye contact. Then she wimpered over to the exit gate and cowered until I leashed her and we left. About 5 minutes later there was a huge HUGE dog fight. Who the hell knows what happened to the little girls who, by the way, were playing RIGHT in the middle of the dogs the entire time. And by middle I mean under foot, literally surrounded. I was long gone to the other side of the park (the human park this time) - all I know is that what I heard did not sound good.

We hung out at the skate park and the human park and that was much more Lilo’s style. She had a great time. One our way out of the park I noticed that the dog park was now empty (gosh could the humungous dog fight have caused an evacuation, ya think?!) and so we stopped to try again.

Lilo had a better time this time - she sort of sniffed around, briskly walked once or twice, acted excited about some tennis balls until the balls left my hand (this retriever has NO retreiving desires at all!). Meanwhile the adjacent *small dog* dogpark has two otherwise friendly dogs running around playing just fine when some lady drops in with her two Jack Russell Terriers, lets them in and - bam - dog fight. What the hell, people? If your dogs aren’t well socialized, keep them the hell out of the dog park! So all parties try to break up the dog fight (mostly unsuccessfully) and the owner of the nasty JRTs gets her dogs out of the small dog park so they don’t go back for seconds. Whew - crisis averted.

Except then she lets them in the big dog park! Gosh if they didn’t get along with those other dogs maybe they could come pick on MY dog. Or my kids! Frap. They immediately charge my dog who is now literally frozen with fear. I’m grabbing my kids and dragging them toward the exit as fast as possible and calling to my dog to follow. You’d think the owner of the JRTs would notice and intervene but that would be giving her way too much credit since clearly she doesn’t get that her dogs have some dominance/agression issues. Lilo bolts for the exit and into the safety of the van. So much for the dog park.

Is this how they all are? Why would anyone want to take their dog to a place like this? I think we’ll be sticking with the human parks from now on.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 8:42 am and is filed under Moving, Other Stuff, Venting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.