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Few options for dog owners

If the City of Penticton can spend millions on an arena, why can’t money be spent on a few decent dog parks?

This is in response to the letter “Of trails and dogs” in the Nov. 4 Western News.

I am not the person whom you ran into, however, I am a dog owner. I am fed up with our city’s lack of reasonable facilities for dogs. I live in the Columbia area and there is only one place (in our area) to let your dogs off their leashes so that they can run around and have fun.

Runners can run anywhere and are not harassed by the city’s dog pound officer. Dogs have the channel (full of spear grass as well as broken glass) to run freely, with the exception of the wild horses that would kill your dog if you run into them. There is the dog park at Okanagan Lake (what a joke that park is) and in the hills up above our house, but these areas are full of spear grass, broken glass and deer.

All the owners that I know clean up after their dogs at the school and city parks, yet some people in the areas complain and put signs up that say pickup after your dogs. We do let our dogs — “oh my God” — have fun at the park with each other by letting them of the leash to run free and play with each other. There are a few safe areas (not legal) without deer that attack them and spear grass that costs hundreds of dollars to have removed from ears, paws etc. water sand and dirt (we don’t want to have to bath our dogs every time we go for walks). We as dog owners ,before and after work, don’t have time to travel to out-skirting areas or water parks to let our dogs run.

We live in an area with wildlife. To all those people who say that dog owners don’t pick up after their dogs, have you ever considered the coyotes that travel freely throughout Penticton? They don’t have owners picking up after them, and I can tell a lot of the feces left at fields is from coyotes.

There are responsible people and irresponsible people in every walk of life, this includes dog owners. The majority of dog owners are responsible people and should have a safe area for their dogs to go and have fun. Everyone else has a place they can go to relax and have fun, why can’t there be a place safe and free from harassment in Penticton for dogs?

It would be nice to have a field that is fenced in that is larger than 30 feet by 15 feet that we are legally allowed to let our dogs run in and be safe from cars, wild animals, glass and spear grass. If the City of Penticton (taxes from homeowners) can spend millions of dollars on an arena that everything is overpriced at, why can’t money be spent on a few decent dog parks?

Connie Warren

 

Penticton