"You need to allow us to exercise hunting dogs in crowded nineteenth-century parks"
The essay below is from the Op-ed pages of the NY Times today. It was written by Ted Kerasote, a nature writer who lives in Wyoming. Even though he is way out there in the Wyoming wilderness he has one characterisitc that many New Yorker's may find reassuring: chutzpah.First, let me disabuse Mr. Kerasote of the notion that at preciesly 9 am leashes are whipped out and placed on dogs and dogs remain on leashes until the 9 pm witching hour when they are removed. This just ain't so. Dogs run around off leash throughout the day in all city parks. The "Forever Wild" areas are particularly favored by unleashed dog walkers. Why? Because enforcement in these areas is non-existent. I don't mean virtually "non-existent," or almost "non-existent," I mean there are no enforcement officers in these areas ever.
Clearly Mr. Kerasote does not spend a lot of time in our city's parks because he completely ignores the damage done by unleashed dogs in favor of the "dog bite" issue. Certainly there are many people who use the parks (myself included) who are afraid of being bitten by dogs off the leash but that is only one small part of the equation. In a 1998 article in New York Magazine, Tony Hendra noted:
"Just to repair dog damage in the relatively small Riverside Park last year cost almost $100,000 (on top of regular restoration and maintenance); the citywide estimate is at least half a million. Yet we all foot the bill. Dog-license money supports the licensing agency itself; dog tickets go into the city’s general coffer. Rover’s freedom isn’t free."My own favorite spot, the Wildflower Meadow, despite being completely enclosed by a fence, still gets torn-up by unleashed dogs. In fact, dog owners find the fenced-in area a convenient place to let their dogs run free without fear of them running away. The gardeners have put numerous signs up on the fencing but there are some dog owners who just can't read or choose to ignore the signs.
And what about dog owners? Most dog owners abide by the leash laws but many are not all that enlightened. Why else would we see such an explosion of large, "working breeds" in Central Park. Don't these people understand that these breeds need lots of outdoor space? Or maybe they understand this quite well. Tony Hendra, in the same New York Magazine article, quotes the Parks Commissioner as saying:
"What is strikingly new, says Benepe, is the size of the breeds people are buying. For many decades, the typical New York dog tended to be a handbag baby -- Pekingese, Maltese, Yorkie, Pomeranian, etc. -- no doubt because rules against pets in apartments were pervasive and strict, and the little fellas were easier to smuggle in and out.While dog bites may not be a major reason to enforce the leash law, what about the damage to plants? What about the dog feces everywhere? What about animal and bird habitat destruction? These are conveniently ignored in Mr. Kerasote's piece. And no wonder, he lives in Wyoming and has little need to visit an urban park for his "wild" experiences.
Now, says Benepe, he and his staff are seeing bigger and bigger dogs coming into the parks: the obvious retrievers, German shepherds, St. Bernards, Rottweilers, huskies, and Labs, but also Rhodesian Ridgebacks, Irish wolfhounds, Great Danes. Several of these appear on the American Kennel Club’s top ten breeds of last year (the top two are Labs and Rotts). The Big Dog syndrome can be seen as an invasion of suburbiana into the city’s culture -- the priorities of Westport, White Plains, and Saddle River abroad in Central Park. Benepe, however, believes they’re “a fashion statement.”
For many New Yorkers (myself included) the city's parks afford an opportunity to enjoy nature in an urban environment. That enjoyment is severely curtailed when I encounter 15-20 dogs (as happened last Thursday morning) running off the leash in an area that is suppose to be "Forever Wild". The "Forever Wild" designation has become meaningless since leash laws are not enforced in these areas.
I do not agree with Mr. Kerasote that dogs have made our parks "safer." Safer for whom? We have only substituted one problem for another. Until the city starts to agressively enforce the leash law the problem will continue.
Mad Dogs
Kelly, Wyo.
THIS week, Judge Peter Kelly of the New York State Supreme Court may incarcerate 1.4 million New Yorkers. Their crime? Being dogs.
The Juniper Park Civic Association in Queens is taking the city to court over its 1959 leash law, which requires dogs in public places to be restrained by a leash of no more than six feet. In recent years, the law hasn’t been fully enforced. Instead, city park administrators have accommodated the recreational needs of dogs and their owners by instituting “courtesy hours,” usually between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m., during which dogs, under the voice command of humans, can be off-leash in designated areas of the parks. The crown jewel of the courtesy-hour system is Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, where one can see dozens of dogs frolicking on weekday mornings and several hundred on the weekend.
But with 1.4 million dogs in the city, someone in some park at some time will be bitten, just as someone will be struck by a softball, hit by a cyclist or run over by a car. The association has argued that the public must be protected from these occasional bites by restraining dogs at all times. Their reasoning is hardly unique. Across America, more and more urban and suburban communities have instituted leash laws, not only to protect the public against dog bites, but also to protect against lawsuits.
The upshot is that dogs lead ever more incarcerated lives at the end of a very short lead, and dog owners don’t get to play with them in the way dogs and people have interacted for thousands of years. This loss might be viewed as one of the tradeoffs that comes with living in an urbanized world — if, that is, leash laws actually worked as intended.
But after nearly 50 years of watching them in operation, we can say that they’ve brought about the opposite of what we’ve hoped: dogs that are constantly leashed aren’t as well socialized as dogs that get to meet other dogs off-leash; they display more behavioral problems; and they’re often more aggressive. These are the very sorts of dogs that, spending their lives away from their own kind — often in a city apartment or suburban yard — bark their heads off at passers-by, make the mailman’s life hell and act aggressively toward other dogs and people.
Yet, proponents of strong leash laws have a point: 4.7 million dog bites were reported by the Centers for Disease Control in 1994. However, the C.D.C. and its Canadian counterpart also note that the majority of these dog bites — 75 percent in the United States and 65 percent in Canada — didn’t happen to pedestrians who encountered an off-leash dog in a public place. Rather, most dog bites occurred within the home to a family member who knew the dog. In fact, only 1.1 percent of all dog bites surveyed in Canada occurred in public parks or sports and recreation areas. Data on emergency room visits in the United States also puts the danger of dog bites into perspective. Only 1.3 percent of all people admitted to emergency rooms in the United States are treated for dog bites. The chances of being bitten by a dog are about the same as being poisoned.
The chances of being bitten by an urban dog are even lower. Their caretakers, being city people and not so wedded to automobiles, walk, and when they walk they take their dogs with them. If they have access to parks that allow off-leash recreation, their dogs run and play with other dogs, burning off pent-up energy. In addition, both person and dog get what many of us want nearly every day: access to some green space, safety from cars, exercise and conversation with our own kind.
New York’s dog owners and their dogs deserve these basics, and not simply because the dog owners pay taxes that support the parks. The benefits of off-leash recreation have spread far beyond dogs and their owners. Parks that were once hangouts for criminals have been reclaimed for the non-dog-owning public, in part, by the presence of so many law-abiding citizens walking their dogs at all hours and in bad weather.
Sending the city’s dogs back to leash jail won’t make the parks any safer. The leash law and off-leash courtesy hours have worked synergistically to control dogs on crowded streets while allowing them and their owners to enjoy a small portion of the city’s green space. Both should be kept.
