Dog Park

Hello again everybody!

My fiancee and I took our 3 dogs to a Dog Park in Alexandria yesterday. Anyone ever heard of these things before? I hadn't. For those who haven't, it's just a little corner of a public park that has a 6' fenced in area for people to bring their dogs to socialize them and let them off the leash. This one had a bunch of tennis balls for them to play with. It also had little baggie dispensers for cleanup. The dogs all absolutely loved it and it's good for them! Good exercise, good socialization and just plain fun to watch. Good people socialization too

The only problem is that is way up there and you have to deal with the beltway, etc. We feel very strongly that we should have something like that much closer and even toyed with the idea of starting one.

We had packed some food for later, so on the way back down we stopped at White Plains Regional Park in Waldorf. How surprised we were to find a bigger and better one in that very park, so the dogs got a double treat that day! They even had a smaller, but ample, area for small and/or shy dogs. Still, we would love to see something like that in Chancellor's Run or Leonardtown.

The only bad thing I can see coming out of it is someone bringing in a diseased dog or something an otherwise irresponsible pet owner would expose other peoples' pets to.

The legalities are easy enough to work out. The county or sponsor assumes no liability for people or dogs and set reasonable ground rules.

Should we start a petition? Anybody done anything like this before? I would love to get the ball rolling.

Dog parks are SO MUCH FUN!! In VA Bch, the parks service has you register your dogs and prove they've been licensed and have all thier shots. They issue you a tag for your dog and you're set! I wish there was a dog park in that area too. I've noticed that if an owner is irresponsible, they're probably not the type of pet person who'd bring thier dog to a park. The only trouble I've had down here is my "bad" dog teaching the other quiet dogs that barking is fun, and some dogs are aggressive towards certain other dogs. We have a good time every time we go.

I didn't know they had one in Va. Beach. I was down there for four years. I definitely would have gone. I'm going to give St. Mary's Parks and Rec a call to see what it would take.

I have heard these are a lot of fun!

here is a link to a group of parks in Fairfax. If nothinig else, it can give you ideas of what it takes (what you might expect) if you want to try and start one up down there.

http://www.co.fairfax.va.us/parks/offleash.htm

Originally posted by doglovers
I didn't know they had one in Va. Beach. I was down there for four years. I definitely would have gone.

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Yep, they've got 2 good fenced in ones that I know of in Owl Creek off of General Booth and one at Woodstock Rec. Park off of Providence and Indian River Rd.