Complaint Box | The Running of the Dogs
By JEANNIE ROSENFELD
P. C. Vey Complaint Box
Got a Gripe?
Get a grip. Send your rant — no more than 500 words, please — to: metropolitan@nytimes.com.
I don’t mind admitting that I can be afraid of dogs — can be, rather than am, because it depends on their size and bark. But there’s a reason the New York City Department of Parks
and Recreation requires that dogs in parks be leashed between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m., except in dog runs, and there’s a reason it regulates their behavior even in designated off-leash areas before and after those hours. Dogs are welcome at urban parks, but the parks are primarily for people, and while the vast majority of dogs are domesticated, acts of aggression by roaming dogs are, unfortunately, not uncommon.Yet, some pet owners routinely flout these policies, their lackadaisical attitudes suggesting that the rules are silly if not unnatural and that anxious civilians like me are nothing short of hysterical. Well, I have been pounced upon by dogs during my otherwise cherished runs in Central Park on more than one occasion. The most recent episode involved a dog that stood taller than my five-foot height — he jumped me from behind. His owner returned my stunned gasp with a chuckle and what he thought was a compliment: “Oh, he was just flirting with you!”
More times than I can count, I have been subjected to lesser intimidation. Perhaps sensing my caution when I see them wildly scurrying about at the park’s West 93rd Street entrance, dogs big and small regularly snarl at me and block my passage. Their masters, never very close by, usually approach with the same amused smile as I struggle to find my way around their barking pets, implicating me as a stickler interfering with innocent play or, worse, a scaredy cat who needs to toughen up if I’m going to survive in the big city. Apparently they haven’t read the city’s Dogs in Parks brochure, which advises, among many guidelines: “Please remember that other park visitors may be afraid of your dog” and “Do not allow your dog to run and jump on other people or dogs without an invitation.”
This winter, the problem has been worse than ever, as repeated snowfalls have blanketed the park, obscured its pathways and transformed it into a wonderland beautiful to behold but not so easy for people to navigate. Devoted runners like me still make it to the park and delight in the briskly luminous setting, but we are outnumbered by the dogs, who, encouraged by their owners, have taken these conditions as an invitation to run wild at all hours, brazenly taking over our turf and leaving their mark — yellow stains defiling otherwise pristine white snow.
There are so many dogs out there now that I routinely have to reroute. Last week, a gorgeous black Lab galloped by the Delacorte Theater, stopping me in my tracks; a few days ago, a husky stared me down by the footbridge overlooking the Tennis Center. On both occasions, the owner was nowhere in sight, so I turned onto a different path, hoping, praying that Mr. Big-and-Frisky was not in a flirting mood.
Jeannie Rosenfeld, a freelance writer specializing in arts and culture, lives on the Upper West Side.
My response
A few weeks ago in Prospect Park a woman's small dog drowned in the lake after falling through the thin ice. Her complaint was that the Parks Department wasn't prepared to rescue her dog. Since she had let it off the leash whose fault was it that the dog drowned? My response is: It's your dog. The law says keep it on a leash. End of story. Don't blame others for your failure when in fact if nothing had happened to your dog and it was still alive and leaping about on people you'd give a chuckle and say: "Oh it's only flirting."
You know dog owners think just like parents do about their children. "Oh they're so lovely how can you not want to love them as I do?" Well surprise surprise we don't. It's time you learn that.
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