Dog Park Caution

Dog Park Caution

This is our caution for you regarding dog parks.
1st we love the concept of dog parks that socialized dogs can go play. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE that idea.
But we find that thats not quite the reality.
Before we consider the dogs and the social environment lets think about the dog park right now with no dogs  present.

Who cleans the water bowls? Not rinsed and refilled.... cleaned! It doesn't happen...
You don't know who has been there.
Who's pooped on the ground who might have had worms....worms live on dirt for up to 8 months.
I personally know dogs that have gotten giardia, worms and even ring worm from dog parks as well as those pesky little fleas they can bring home.
For the health concerns alone I wouldn't even take my dogs into an empty dog park.

Now throw in all the dogs that are there right now. Not all dog parks.... but many of them the owners tend to have the mentality of "They'll work it out" - TRUE but in the wild they wouldn't all survive are we all ok with that? The constantly changing dynamics of the dog park create problems. Shy dogs become aggressive because there is no structure and they just get bullied. The pushy dogs learn to be punks and learn to push others around to get their way.

I work with countless dogs with dog aggression issues because they went to dog parks and learned bad manners that got worse. I've talked to people that get a new dog and take him to the dog park and let him go to see if hes ok with other dogs. Do you want your dog in the park to be someone elses test?


I believe that the socialization portion of letting dogs socialize with other dogs is fabulous but unclean dog parks with no structure or rules is not the way to go about socialization.

Look for a trainer in your area that offers Socialization Playgroups.
We offer a playgroup with lots of structure and rules and we have different groups of playgroups for the social dogs.. dogs that need to learn to be social and a special group for the littles.
We require that dogs have taken some form of training with us so that they will understand and we have a communication system with them when we do need to step in and interrupt behavior or redirect them on to something else.

PLEASE reconsider taking your dogs to dog parks. The risks highly out weigh any possible benefits.