Confrontation at the Dog Park

This is a vent post, and a long one. I had a pretty awful experience at the dog park earlier, and I’m still reeling over it. I guess I need to get it off my chest a bit. I want to make it clear I know I was in the wrong a bit. But holy shit! The entitlement at the dog park was insane.

I am not one to frequent a dog park. I live in the country and have no reason to. But I have a friend that lives in town (who also has a kid that loves dogs) and my kids love the idea of taking our dog to a dog park. We never go, but to make them happy that’s where we went, today. Well, just my daughter and my friend’s kid, today. My 16 yr old stayed home.

It was fine at first. We get there. Our dog, an overgrown puppy not quite a year, is running around playing with other dogs. However, my daughter kept wanting to walk our dog on the leash. I kept telling her no, but after a while I just gave her the leash and told her to bring it back after a few minutes. She wanted to leash our dog and walk with him around the park. I didn’t want her to, because our dog needed to run around and play, but I figured if I let her do it for a few minutes she would quit bugging me about it.

A little while later my daughter comes back to me and my friend ( we had been sitting and chatting while her son & my daughter played with my dog) and tells me she got in trouble by this lady for having our dog on the leash. My daughter is 8 FYI, so pretty young. I ask her to point out this lady. While I didn’t like the fact that this lady got on to my daughter, I figured I’d let it slide. Buttt… I look over and see her yelling at my dog who is playing with her dog. Our dog had been playing with hers this whole time and it never seemed to be a problem until now.

At this point, I’m like ‘ ok, this lady needs to calm the hell down. If she’s yelling at my dog then she was probably being rude to my daughter instead of just ‘getting on to her’. Also I didn’t want her thinking she could just keep confronting my daughter over other possible things, so I decided to go talk to her. This lady is also standing with a group of people. Probably family. Probably friends. Who knows.

This is how the conversation went. It was not a civil conversation:

The lady had an aggressive attitude the whole convo.

Me: excuse me ma’am. My daughter was telling me that you got on to her for having our dog on a leash.

Lady: Yeah! Dog’s are not supposed to be leashed in the dog park.

Me: Ok, I understand that but I would’ve appreciated it if you could’ve confronted me instead.

Lady: IDK who she belongs to. (She says this loudly and snidely btw)

*me and my friend were the only other adults in the park besides this lady and her group. *

Lady: dogs become aggressive with other dogs on a leash.

Me: that’s not true. (It could be, but I’ve never heard it before and I’ve been around dogs my whole life)

Lady: yes it is! Anyone with common knowledge knows that (she emphasizes by tapping her head.)

Me: well, true or not, I didn’t appreciate you getting on to my daughter. You should’ve come to me instead and talked to me about it.

The lady, I guess trying to intimidate me, gets as close as she can and tries to get in my face while repeatedly trying to convince me how stupid I am for ‘not knowing that dogs can be aggressive on a leash.’

I tell her ‘you are rude’. Then she tells me that I’M rude and says, ‘you need to leave!’

She even yells directly after that ‘get out of here!’

I wish I was making this up.

So then the group joins in and basically keeps reiterating what the lady said. It escalates. The lady keeps getting closer to me, I take two steps back, just to keep distance but she keeps getting closer. She even bows up at one point acting like she is going to hit me.

At this point, I start losing my cool and start getting loud, myself. My friend ends up walking over because she sees the lady get in my face. And she hears the group chiming in. The lady also starts complaining about my dog. How my dog won’t leave her and the groups dogs alone. He keeps humping them, she said.

My friend says that she never saw that happen once the whole time we were there. Then my friend looks down and points out that the lady’s dog was humping mine, at that very moment. The lady hurriedly grabs her dog and continues to argue with me.

This teenager is with them. She is also making remarks & running her mouth the entire time. I look over at her and tell her that I wasn’t talking to her because I got sick of hearing her. She could’ve been over 21 for all I know and not even a child at all. She looked old enough. Her dad storms over to me like he’s going to fight me. Me, a 5’4 woman. And stands over me and tries to get in my face telling me ‘that’s his daughter, I’m talking to.’

I tell him I wasn’t talking to him or her, and they need to mind their business. He says it became his business when I yelled at his daughter, who kept running her mouth. I guess she is allowed to involve herself in an adult confrontation, but is exempt from the consequences - and then dad can run over and ‘fight’ whoever.

I pointed out that he was being a hypocrite because my daughter was why I was confronting them in the first place. It wasn’t OK when I was doing it (defending my child) but it’s all fine when he’s doing it. He did back down after that.

Then the lady screamed ‘get out!’

We eventually gathered our things and left. I realized we were getting no where with them.

I did call her a ‘bitch’ and to ‘fuck off’ as I was leaving because she continued to yell at me.

They acted like they owned the place. And that their dogs were perfect, and they had a right to talk to, whoever, however they wanted to.

They really ruined this whole experience for my daughter. I’m not against the lady maybe talking to her and maybe trying to council her on how to be with dogs in the dog park, especially coming to me and having a conversation with me about what was making her uncomfortable etc.. which whatever could’ve made her uncomfortable, I don’t know. My daughter wasn’t even near her with the leash. She was walking by when the lady snapped at her. (She told me later that the lady did talk loudly at her, and told her “Let this be a lesson to you” ) My dog’s also a puppy and was just happy to be there.

I looked at the rules and no where does it state that dogs have to be unleashed. I know it is a rule at other parks (I looked it up) as a caution due to other dogs running over, but it’s not a ‘you just can’t under any circumstances leash your dog at the park’. I mean how does anyone get their dog out of the park?

I’m still upset over it. We will never go to a dog park again. Not because of the dogs but because of the people! The people were more aggressive and terrifying then the dogs. The dogs were nice.