Park Pooping

Wednesday I had the kids at Veterans Memorial Park in Esquimalt. It was a nice sunny day and the park was full of kids and families. While my kids were playing I watched as a woman came into the park with her two dogs.

She then let them off leash. Actually, not just off leash, she took their collars off. This is already not allowed, but I figured maybe her dogs were well behaved. She then pulled out her cell and did her best to ignore her dogs. The dogs stayed on the grass, but the larger one started having a poop. She kept her back to her dog ON PURPOSE. I know since her dog was having an issue pooping and waddled in front of her. As soon as the owner saw this, she turned some more so she couldn’t see her dog. This went on for a couple minutes.

I could see she had no bags with her, and I could see by her body language that she wasn’t interested in cleaning up the mess. I started to get angry. I was going to head over and give her an earful, but I refused to do that in front of my children. I did look through my wagon to see if I had any waste bags with me and unfortunately I didn’t.

As soon as her dog was done, she headed out of the park with them.

This is a memorial park that lots of kids play in. Off leash dogs are not allowed. There is an off leash park not too far away (less than a 5 minute walk). I’ve had my kids come home with dog crap on them from people like this.

In retrospect I should have said something to her to let her know that I saw what she did, and wasn’t impressed. I regret not taking that action.

Today CFAX has a new poll related to whether it is worth $50,000 a year to supply dog waste bags. I quickly voted yes, but there is no way to provide comments. On Wednesday if there was a bag dispenser in the park I would have grabbed a bag and walked it over to her. That would have sent a clear message.

Please note that I am a dog lover and do my best to clean up after my dog. I quite often clean up after other people’s dogs, and quite often carry extra bags with me. I’ve used the bags from parks when I have run out, and I’ve used the bags to clean up messes other people have left behind. $50,00 is not a lot of money from the city’s budget specially consider what the City of Victoria spends to remove discarded couches ($125,000 in 2007). Anyone who has had to clean dog crap out of their child’s shoe will agree. Perhaps increase the dog licencing fee to help offset this cost?