Regarding Dog Parks

Professionally, we don’t recommend heading to the dog park. More often than not, they’re trouble waiting to happen. It’s best to avoid them as a rule of thumb, and here are a few reasons why.

Disease

Dog parks are an excellent breeding ground for diseases and parasites. Not everyone picks up after their dogs or gets them vaccinated. Even if they do, you can’t always get every little bit of poop, where diseases like parvo can live without a host for up to 10 years.

Dog fights

Not every person cares or understands that their dog doesn’t like other dogs, and will bring them into the communal area anyway. Even if your dog is friendly, you can’t expect it to like every other dog it comes across, that’s like asking you to be friends with every person you’ve met in your entire life.

Unreliable recall

Most people who go into a dog park cannot recall their dog on the first command. A solid recall is essential to letting your dog off leash, if they are unable to return when you first call them, they have not earned the freedom yet.

Other people 

When we take our dogs to the dog park it’s important to be watching them. Unfortunately, many people think dogs can supervise themselves, which is often similar to leaving young children unattended. When things start to get out of hand, the dogs need to be separated and it’s up to their owners to do this. If someone isn’t paying attention to their animal, this task may become infinitely more difficult.

It only takes one trip to the dog park for everything in your dog’s life to go wrong. Maybe they eat some grass where another animal did their business and contract something? What if they play too roughly with another dog and one becomes injured? That in itself could bring forth even larger issues, including lawsuits. Don’t take the risk.