Park Fun Facts

Sorry, I've been busy with a number of things and haven't had time to post, so I'll just post some basic facts and you can interpret them anyway you want. The parks data comes from the Portland Parks website.

City of Portland Parks
Acres of land managed: 10000
Acres of park managed: 8738.8
Acres of city golfcourses: 794.4
Acres of full-time off-leash: 33.137

Number of full-time playscapes: 110
Number of full-time off-leash areas: 6
Percentage of Portland households with children under age 18*: 27
Percentage of Portland households with a dog: 40+
Number of daily playscape inspections: 110

Number of tennis courts: 119
Number of softball fields: 99
Number of soccer/football fields: 80
Number of horseshoe pits: 20
Number of time-limited OL areas: 27

Estimated amount of money spent in first year on leash and scoop enforcement: $100,000.00
Number of people doing the enforcement: 20
Number of man-hours spent enforcing scoop and leash laws per month: 3400
Total scoop law citations written in last 12 months: 3

Estimate number of dog visits to neighborhood parks in a year**: 2,427,250
Number of "bite investigations" in parks for 12 months: 25
Number of "bite investigations" per dog visit: .00107% or 1 in 93,356
Number of crime victims in the City of Portland in 2003**: 46,391
Odds of being a crime victim in the City of Portland in 2003: 8.6% or 1 in 11.6

* 2000 census, though this number has been declining for many years.
**Conservative, back-of-the envelope estimate assuming an average of 50 daily dog visits to each of the 132 neighborhood parks plus Forest Park (25+ undeveloped parks omitted, walkways and other public areas (such as the Esplanade and Tom McCall Waterfront Park) and natural areas also omitted. For most parks, the number of visits are much, much greater.
***From City website and assuming a population of 539,438.

No Chickens Here...

C-SPOT is sponsoring a Take Back Our Park Rally at Willamette Park this Saturday the 28th at 1 pm. Show up with your dog(s)...on leash of course. For more information, contact C-SPOT at 503-230-8131 or go to www.cspotpdx.com.

Still no word on the lab tests from the raw meat...

Last Images for Now

More pictures. I actually hoped that on at least one of the pictures there would be a field full of soccer players or a playground teaming with kids. But there wasn't, and it's clear to me there won't be. Plus, with the rain, there is even less demand for the open spaces. That shouldn't be a DQ automatically, as dog owner's know that we use the parks rain or shine. Can't say that for baseball players. In fact, one famous story is of a gentleman ticketed for having a dog off-leash in a downpour in Wilshire Park a few months ago. Absolutely no one else cared to be in the park that day (nor did he, I'm sure) but he got a ticket nonetheless. So here are the last pictures for a while.

Bonus park is Wilshire. Picture taken Monday, Aug. 23 at 4 p.m.

City Endorses Actions of Dog Poisoner

Look at the picture on this KATU news story. The sad truth in Portland is that when dogs are threatened in this town, the City does exactly what the creep who did the threat wanted. If you're angry about this too, plan to attend the next meeting of the Off-Leash Advisory Committee on Tuesday, September 14 on the 2nd floor of the Portland Building downtown. Meeting starts at 5:30 p.m. and there will be an opportunity for the public to speak.

Heavy weekend usage

Sorry, an unexpected trip to Seattle over the weekend meant I didn't get to take as many pictures as I wanted. But here is Col. Summers park at 5:30 on Sunday evening. (Remember, this is still considered "peak time" in all shared and unshared parks. It wasn't raining, but not a single human was in the park, not even the couple of homeless folks who are usually present.)
Click on images for larger size.


Here is Peak Time in Overlook park at about 6:30 on August 22:

Here is the Overlook "shared" area at about the same time:

More Pictures

The game continues... I'll admit that after a few days this game gets pretty boring. That's part of the point. It's not difficult to find a place in a Portland park devoid of people in which to play catch with another person or a dog. The fact is that there is just not that much demand for the space, yet access for some is tightly regulated nonetheless. Here's Colonel Summers park at 11 today:

Today's bonus park is...Sewellcrest! This was at 10:15 today:

Sorry again for the small pictures. They're really neat to look at in larger size. If I can just find somewhere cheap (free!) to host them...

What's wrong with this picture?

Today we start a new game: What's Wrong With This Picture? To play, just examine the daily post of a Portland park scene and try to spot the reason that people cannot be exercising with their off-leash dog. (Secret hint: you probably won't find any problems!) We start with two pictures. The first, of Colonel Summers Park, was taken at 11:30 am on August 19, 2004. Colonel Summers is a large park that, for many in closest SE Portland, is the only park in walking distance, but no dogs are allowed to run there. I'll provide a picture of it each day sometime between 9am and 4pm (the supposed peak-usage hours). I'll try to include bonus pictures of other parks as well.
(Note: sorry for the small size. I can provide full-size images on request.)


Today's bonus park is Sunnyside. This is also a no-off-leash-dogs-allowed park, though it's usually just a big empty field in the middle of a high-dog neighborhood. This was taken Aug. 18 at 5pm.

Though these pictures will be of only a few parks near me, you can bet a box of dog bisquits that most of the 129 dog-feasible parks in town look just the same in the daytime. Also note how green and manicured the grass is....just how much do we spend on keeping these fields nice for the occasional ballgame?

More attempted attacks on dogs

Not much that needs to be said, because you've probably already heard about the attempt to harm more dogs at a City of Portland Park. How long is the Parks Bureau going to do the bidding of these thugs? And at what point will they take the same sort of drastic measures to protect dog owners that they took by restricting all off-leash activities because of the behavior of a small few? Remember, these guys are doing malicious and deliberate acts targeting owners and their pets.

We're spending how much on this?

If your neighborhood is anything like mine, you've noticed that there has been a huge leap in crime lately. In the past two weeks, I've seen 5 car break-ins in my little SE neighborhood alone. There is a an epidemic of crystal meth-related crimes in Portland; Portland Monthly reports in it's July issue that Meth is a factor in 85% of all property crimes committed in Oregon. It's a rapidly growing problem and our city and state governments don't have nearly enough funding to even begin to tackle it. The DA office has half the attorneys it had a few years ago and we even have a brand new jail that can't be operated because of lack of funding. Yet young children are living in dangerous, but normal-appearing households, entirely neglected by their parents and thoroughly exposed to dangerous, even toxic, chemicals.

But the city of Portland has recently hired 20 employees to put in 3400 man-hours a month patroling our city. Why? To scour neighborhoods looking for breakins? To rescue abused and damaged children from crystal meth houses? No. They are hired for the sole purpose of driving from park to park, hiding in bushes and waiting to ambush people who are simply walking in a park without physical control of their dog. These are our City's priorities?

Dog ownership benefits owners and society

As has been said many times, the current leash law scheme discourages pet ownership by making it difficult to provide for pet needs. Yet there is a large and growing body of data that demonstrate the positive effects provided by dog ownership to people from children to the elderly. The CDC, the Mayo Clinic and the National Institute of Health all cite a variety of studies on the contributions which pets make to the health of their owners. Society at large reaps benefits both in the form of lower costs to the public healthcare system and through reduction in the loss of productivity associated with age, depression and many chronic health problems.

The Delta Society lists the following studies on its website:

· Pets fulfill many of the same support functions as humans for adults and children. (Melson, 1998).
· Children exposed to humane education programs display enhanced empathy for humans compared with children not exposed to such programs. (Ascione, 1992). Children who own pets score significantly higher on empathy and prosocial orientation scales than non-owners. (Vidovic, 1999).
· Positive self-esteem of children is enhanced by owning a pet (Bergensen, 1989). And children's cognitive development can be enhanced by owning a pet (Poresky, 1988). Children owning pets are more involved in activities such as sports, hobbies, clubs or chores. (Melson, 1990).
· Children with autism have more prosocial behaviors less autistic behaviors such as self-absorption. (Redefer, 1989).
· Pet owners feel less afraid of being a victim of crime when walking with a dog or sharing a residence with a dog. (Serpel, 1990).
· Pet owners have better physical health due to exercise with their pets. (Serpel, 1990).
· Seniors who own dogs go to the doctor less than those who do not. In a study of 100 Medicare patients, even the most highly stressed dog owners in the study has 21 percent fewer physician's contacts than non-dog owners. (Siegel, 1990).
· Activities of daily living (ADL) level of seniors who did not currently own pets deteriorated more on average than that of seniors who currently owned pets. (Raina, 1999).
· Seniors who own pets coped better with stress life events without entering the healthcare system. (Raina, 1998).
· Pet owners have fewer minor health problems (Friedmann, 1990, Serpel, 1990). Pet owners have lower blood pressure. (Friedmann, 1983, Anderson 1992) and lower triglyceride and cholesterol levels than non-owners (Anderson, 1992).
· Companionship of pets (particularly dogs) helps children in families adjust better to the serious illness and death of a parent (Raveis, 1993).
· Contact with pets develops nurturing behavior in children who may grow to be more nurturing adults (Melson, 1990).
· Pet owners have a higher on-year survival rates following coronary heart disease (Friedman, 1980, 1995). Having a pet may decrease heart attack mortality by 3%. This translates into 30,000 lives saved annually (Friedman, 1980).
· Medication costs dropped from an average of $3.80 per patient per day to just $1.18 per patient per day in new nursing home facilities in New York, Missouri and Texas that have animals as an integral part of the environment. (Montague, 1995).
· People who have AIDS that have pets have less depression and reduced stress. Pets are a major source of support and increase perception the ability to cope. (Siegel, 1999, Carmack, 1991).

PDXDogBlog FAQ

What is this blog advocating?
We feel that most Portlanders should be able to walk to a neighborhood park and exercise with their dog during all daylight hours, with a few limits. There are some legitimate complaints about dogs in our parks. Baseball and softball teams don't appreciate playing on a field littered with dog poop, for example, and we don't blame them. There are places and times in parks where it is inappropriate to have an off-leash dog, such as summertime sports fields, children's play areas, nature preserves, and anywhere there are lots of people. Unfortunately, a small number of dog owners don't understand what is appropriate. At the same time, many parks are often vacant of people, especially on weekdays and in the winter.

What is the solution?
A reasonable set of rules is needed to allow those who want to exercise in their neighborhood parks to do so and those who don't want to interact with dogs to avoid them as well. It is fair to require dog owners to keep their off-leash dogs in a certain section of each park. Most parks in Portland are more than several acres large, so there should be room for all.

In addition, we should re-allocate some of the $500,000 the City has earmarked for chasing down off-leash dogs to activities that educate dog-owners about proper park etiquette and designated areas for off-leash activity, and enforcement of laws on dangerous animals and poop scooping.

What about the poop?
The problem with some owners not cleaning up after their pets has been around for a long time, but only half-heartedly addressed by the Parks Bureau. A minority of Portland parks actually has a clean-up bag dispenser, and often, there is no trash can in the park or it is inconveniently located. When the parks were going through a severe budget crunch a few years ago, some trashcans had signs near them urging people to minimize their trashcan use to save money. It would be a good idea for the Parks Department to put up similar signs for dog owners explaining the importance of cleaning up after one's dog, and the risks associated with not doing so. It is possible to ask the community of dog owners to be responsible. The current City method of hiring 20 employees to do nothing but enforce poop and leash laws is as expensive as it is ineffective: for the 12 months that ended in June 2004, only 3 citations were issued for violating the scoop law!

What about dangerous dogs?
There certainly are dangerous dogs around. But according to Multnomah Animal Services, they're not generally in our parks. Despite the fact that several thousand dogs go to the parks each day, more than 97% of bite investigations conducted by Animal Services are for incidents outside of parks. Yet by focusing Animal Services employees' attentions at our parks, we're actually distracting them from the (more prevalent) dangers outside of the parks. And it costs a lot of city and county taxpayer money to boot.

What about fenced-in dog parks?
These parks are a good thing for many dogs, but not for all. Some dogs need a fenced in area in which to socialize with other dogs (and some owners need the socialization too!) But we can't possibly build a fenced-in area in enough parks such that most people could walk to them; they are also expensive to build and maintain. And once built, the areas are removed as places to fly a kite, play frisbee, or have a picnic. It is entirely possible for a dog-owner to play catch with his dog in the same field that a mom plays frisbee with her daughter.

Why should dogs be off-leash in parks, anyway?
For one thing, there are many thousands of dogs in Portland; they are in more than 40% of Portland households. Dogs and other pets provide well-documented mental and physical health benefits. For some people, especially the elderly, a dog might be their only constant companion. For others, dogs provide safety and security for their owners in parks and out. But people and dogs both need exercise, and that generally means vigerous exercise, which is difficult to achieve by simply walking around the neighborhood several times a day. And as yards get smaller, or disappear completely, dog-owners need open space for exercise.

Parks, and people who use them, also benefit from having from off-leash activity in parks. Crime, from assaults to vandalism, is greatly reduced when many people are using parks throughout the day. A well-used park is a safer park.

More on the spiked field

From the you-heard-it-here-first department, Fox 12 (and others) are now reporting on the spikes found at a Portland middle school. I'm grateful that the Police Bureau is conducting a serious investigation into this matter.

Will I have to go to the park in the dark?

Due to the weird hour restrictions, the answer to that question will soon be "Yes" if you plan on taking advantage of the evening hours at "shared" parks. In the chart below, you can see that beginning sometime in very early September, it will be dark, or almost dark, by 8 pm, the time when you can legally take your off-leash pooch to one of the priveledged few parks in town. That situation will last for two full months until the "Fall Hours" kick in November 1.

If your "Shared Use" park happens to be next to a school, please note that your daily allocated park use time (morning plus evening) will amount to less than an hour a day for much of December and January.



It's also worth noting that no other park activity is limited by time of day like dog activities are.

More park violence

Now I know that dog owners don't ordinarily go to parks in the wee-small hours of the morning, but the story of a man being shot and killed in Kenilworth Park early this morning, combined with other recent violence in Portland parks, makes me wonder how safe our parks really are. By some accounts, several parks, like Mt. Tabor, are virtual ghost towns where once there were many people. By closing off the parks to a significant number of these users during the day, are we fostering an environment for crime in the nighttime hours?

Fall Off-leash Hours

Soon it will be fall in Portland. Here's a question for you: How many hours in the evening are available to dog owners in September at "shared" parks? The answer might surprise you: none. Sure, you can take your dog off leash at 8 p.m. at one of the few off-leash areas, but take a flashlight. Beginning in the first few days of September, off-leash hours will START well after sunset.

Even better, when they change the times in November, you'll gain less than one hour of daylight in the evenings for exercising with your dog off-leash. You'll need it because there's less than 2 hours of sunlight in the morning for the entire months of November, December, and January.

The good news: Even in dark December, there will be a full 8 hours a day for you to play horseshoes at any one of the Parks' 20 locations!