Residents Will Fight To Stop Their Parks Going To The Dogs

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday January 8, 2009

Steve Dow's story ("A walk in the park", January 5) promoting unleashed dogs in parks reads like a child's book. He writes of unleashed German shepherds and pit bull crosses (legally, pit bulls are not allowed to be unleashed) and owners who stand around talking while supposedly having their dog under voice control: a park full of unleashed dogs surrounded by high-rise flats.

Plenty of people live there but how many get to play ball games in that park? Voice control hardly exists for running children, and is non-existent in a pack of dogs about to chase or attack.

The "unleash dogs in our parks" group is well organised; it plays down the "dog factor" and emphasises people issues.

If I played the kind of games that the "unleash" websites play, such as getting signatures for your (unleashed) park outside pet-supply shops, then I might have got up early and spoken to the many groups that use our park: football teams, schools which have activities there, early morning walkers, picnickers, bikers, children on holidays just mucking around, or the elderly who play lawn bowls and walk across the park.

Instead, when our local park was proposed as off-leash I went house to house and had 200 signatures from people wanting dogs to stay on leashes in parks. Every person but one was firmly against an off-leash proposal.

If a proper survey was ever done I think that few would support turning over our parks to the dogs. I think the one park for each council zone that the 1998 NSW Companion Animal Act required should be fenced, have proper warnings, keep children out and charge an entrance fee for maintenance costs.

I have no problem with unleashing dogs if no one else is in the park. Perhaps this could be the compromise.

Anyone who has been harassed or attacked by dogs in an unleashed area should sue the owners and council jointly for their ridiculous promotion of voice control as a serious dog control method for the average pooch among a group of unleashed dogs.

Parks are for everyone to use safely, and dogs must be controlled by something more than fantasy.

A park should be safe enough for a toddler to run freely.

Nick Smith North Sydney

© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald

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