Grandmother unleashes anger
City Hall needs to provide more guidance
Parks are going to the dogs and the city needs to act, writes Kelly Egan,
We have a dog. He’s pretty much the first thing to deal with in the morning, the first thing after supper and the last thing at night.
So, yes, he runs our world. Good thing we love the silly beast.
But, to the point, have dog owners lost all perspective when it comes to accommodating the needs of their pooches, especially in public places? Sometimes, absolutely.
Eileen Masse, 47, an Ottawa grandmother, sends along a summary of a disturbing incident that occurred on Lemieux Island in the Ottawa River on Aug. 17.
She says she and her three grandchildren (five, seven and eight) were urged to leave the island after a confrontation with a dog owner in her mid-20s left the young ones in tears. “A disgrace,” she calls it. “What is going on, here?”
The island, just off the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway a little west of downtown, is home to a City of Ottawa water purification plant but also includes a grassy oasis of shoreline for public use.
The area has no signs on usage: nothing to indicate whether dogs are banned, permitted on-leash or allowed to run at-large.
Masse said the children were only fishing a few minutes when a swimming dog snatched a floating bobber and retrieved it to shore. After untangling the animal, the dog owner reportedly told the group they were “endangering” her pet and should not only leave, but “get off” the island.
“She then allowed her dog to terrify my grandchildren chasing them when they were clearly afraid of the dog and so did other people’s dogs,” she wrote.
She said she was told the area was a “dog run.” A second dog owner also encouraged them to hightail it, said Masse.
“They cried all the way home and, I was so scared, even I burst into tears as I spoke to the man at the city,” she wrote.
Well, grandma was right all along.
Lemieux Island is not a “dog park” or a “dog run” or a dog anything. Like most places in the city, dogs are to be kept on leash.
She even has an email from Mayor Jim Watson to prove it.
“Lemieux Island is not a ‘dog run’ as this resident suggested,” the mayor replied to her complaint.
“The unfortunate matter here is that people will simply refuse to oblige by the rules, regulations and bylaws, like the on-leash policy, which is in place to protect others, like your grandchildren, from any unfortunate incidents like the one mentioned.
“It is upsetting that you all had to experience this, and I hope you will not be deterred from taking them fishing again.
“I would suggest if you return and that woman is present, to contact 311.”
Clearly, Lemieux has been allowed to evolve into an unofficial dog park in a regulatory or enforcement vacuum.
When the Citizen visited one sunny afternoon last week, there were at least a dozen dogs running about, harmlessly. Some were retrieving floating toys from the river, others were chasing each other about, some idled in the shade.
Unlike most city parks, there were no signs anywhere. (Indeed, it isn’t even clear whether the many acres of open green space on the south side of the island constitute a “park” in the city’s eyes.)
Masse said a city staffer appeared on scene almost immediately after she called and was sympathetic.
“It is an absolute disgrace that I could not take my grandchildren to a place I took my children to fish when they were young, because people with dogs feel we don’t belong there, that we are endangering their huge dogs compared to my little grandchildren.”
Regulating dogs in this city has been a messy affair.
It has given the city, the National Capital Commission and federal departments fits over the years.
I can vouch that dog owners have created many informal off-leash areas where dogs are at-large on a regular basis, in clear defiance of bylaws. Mostly, not much comes of it.
There have, too, been quite public squabbles over dogs being loose in places like the Arboretum at the Central Experimental Farm or, more recently, the former National Defence Medical Centre in Alta Vista. Every dog wants his day.
Without enforcement, over time, nobody knows the rules, or nobody cares. Until someone does.
I blame the city for the Lemieux Island problem, which stems from an absence of guidance.
Would it be so difficult to designate part of this area for dogs only, maybe fence this part off, but leave the rest for mixed use? Or curtail dog hours?
Honestly, keep the dogs at bay, or risk releasing the hounds of indignation.