Friday 30 July 2010

activity parks for dogs

Recently I was sent a link to an article about a dog activity park in England, a park costing £15 000.

The writer takes a dismissive view of the spending of such an amount of money on dogs and interviewed only people with a negative reaction. I think the park is a good idea, as it will encourage people to get out in the fresh air with their dogs. The writer shows his ignorance of agility by not realising that the human has to do the course with the dog, rather than stand still chatting to other dog owners, as many of us do if there is nothing of interest in a fenced dog park.

And to me the main reason for supporting the building of such parks is that we owe it to the dogs who live with us. They didn't choose to live in a crowded human-designed environment and they deserve as much intellectual and physical stimulation as we can provide.

Parks like this are an effective use of a small space.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh - I so agree! As I said in a recent post on Honey's blog - dogs are supposed to be our "best friends" and yet in modern society, there is so little we can actually do with them - we can't go together to watch movies or have a meal or go shopping - not like in Europe where dogs seem to be much more involved in everyday activities - so we NEED to do some specifica training/games types activities with our dogs otherwise how else do we spend time with them? Sure, walking and cuddling are good but they're so "mindless"! Not enough for some of us who want more than that - actually want to interact with our dogs and work together as a team.

Hsin-Yi

parlance said...

Hsin-Yi, to me the thing we owe them most is stimulation and and interesting life.

Slavenka said...

I agree with both of you.

parlance said...

Thanks, Slavenka.

JD and Max said...

Hi Penny,

You can spot the non-dog owners a mile off eh? The person who wrote that article has probably never had a dog in his life, a bit sad really.

We find the UK not particuarlly dog-friendly. A lot of folks say to FH 'don't let your dogs take over your life' as there are quite a few things that FH doesn't do any more since she's got us. But it's because we're not allowed in many places here and FH loves to spend her free time with us so she'll simply not do something if we can't go. She doesn't see that as us 'taking over her life' - she chose to have a dog and she wants us with her! That's why we love our local nature reserve so much as it's dog friendly. Not everyone who visits it is dog friendly mind you, but THAT'S a whole different story.....!

Schnauzer snuggles - JD and Max.

parlance said...

FH, I've been amazed at how strangely different my life has been these last few weeks when we've not been walking with Penny. I can't see myself living without a dog again, and yet I had over fifty years thinking I had a full and rich life (pre-dog). How wrong I was.