They Ruin the Ballfields!

One reason mentioned for excluding dogs from parks is damage done to the fields... It's true that there are a few areas used by dogs where the turf is getting a little thin this time of year. Since dogs are now forced to congregate in dense numbers, this is not surprising.

The same is true of every sports field in the city as soccer players and softball games have pounded and scraped sections of fields. But in Chapter 12 of "Do as we say, not as we do", the same Parks Bureau that wants a light footprint by dog users, feels free to make daily use of heavy trucks driven willy-nilly through the parks, including the sacred sports fields, because park employees apparently can't use a wagon or some other low-impact method to carry trash from cans to their truck.

The Parks Bureau will spend a lot of money and time in the off-season revitalizing these fields: aerating, seeding, mowing, and yes, smoothing out ruts caused by sports users and Parks' trucks. But when was the last time you heard the suggestion that fields shouldn't be used by softball teams because they might be damaged by them?

If the Parks Bureau can determine that the labor hours saved in using heavy vehicles to retrieve bags of trash offsets the cost of the damage done by the trucks, then I'll take their word for it, but why are dog owners the only users held to the highest standard?

Here are some recent pictures (taken at 8:10 last Thursday morning) from Sewallcrest park.

And at another park a few weeks back.