A friend of mine posted that. I don’t know where that sign is located, but I think they should be in all parks, especially dog parks.

I’ve had dogs attacked while being on lead on a public sidewalk. I had a dog attacked on lead on the Haverford Nature Trail years ago.

I’ve had friends whose dogs have been attacked while on lead on sidewalks, in dog friendly parks, and in dog parks.

People seem to think that their dogs should be introduced everyone else’s dog. Not everybody wants to meet your dog and not everybody’s dog wants to meet your dog. Or dogs.

In both cases when my dogs were attacked, it required veterinary care. One time a dog got its throat bit open. That was the Haverford Nature Trail when my dog then was attacked by labrador retrievers off lead.

The second case was when my dog was attacked by an aggressive OFF lead golden retriever – yes aggressive – who was off lead while my dogs were on lead on a public sidewalk. In that case, my dog was attacked so hard that discs in his back were injured. I didn’t think he would walk again, and in order to walk again he required a lifetime of treatment.

At that time I had to push Lower Merion Township to actually fine the dog owner whose dog injured my dog. The man paid a meager $50 fine and then you saw him out with his dog again off lead less than a week later. At one point, I actually saw him on my road and I went outside and I literally screamed at the man because he never said he was sorry he never offered to pay a vet bill and he knew exactly whose dog he injured. I did not care that I screamed at this man. He was a jerk.

This week I noticed again yet someone else posting from Lower Merion Township about off lead dogs… and the lovely man who gave the same woman the finger as I’m sure she was completely terrified and upset about her dog being attacked. I hope her dog is OK. But I know how expensive those vet bills are personally.

I hope by now that someone has identified this man and that woman and that dog to the police and this woman whose dog was hurt. And that dog park is exactly where several people I have known over the years have had their animals attacked. One time it was a former neighbor whose dog had its entire stomach ripped open from underneath.

This is why I actually don’t go to dog parks. I really don’t also support dog parks because every time I’ve been near one all I saw were people who don’t pay attention to their animals and just let their animals do whatever, kind of like their children on the playground. No boundaries, no control.

But this one dog park at Mill Creek and the other at Rolling Hill needs to have somebody there from Lower Merion Township regularly to make sure those dogs stay in control. And for basics like to make sure the poop actually makes it to the trash cans, and to see that said trashcans get emptied. There are also complaints of people getting their cars broken into even if nothing is visible.

Like a lot of municipalities, Lower Merion is great at giving people parks, they just don’t necessarily maintain them well. And I think that goes for Radnor and Tredyffrin as well. But Lower Merion definitely takes the cake for park visitors with a misplaced sense of entitlement.

Here allow me to share some comments that are reviews for these two awfully dog parks in particular in Lower Merion, including the one where the woman’s dog was attacked a few days ago:

I don’t pretend to have the answers here. But I do think Lower Merion Township needs to deal with the problems in their dog friendly parks because they’ve been going on for years. And I hope that poor woman’s dog gets its vet bills paid, and that the poor dog isn’t permanently scarred emotionally as an animal for life, and the same for the dogs’s owner.

And as for the guy proudly displaying his middle finger? Karma will always come back for people like that. That’s just a classless jackass in his natural habitat.

A final note for people out there who like to take their animals to these parks or who just like to walk their animals around in general and don’t think twice about going up to a stray dog: ask before you approach. Don’t assume it’s ok. I have a friend who has a dog that is reactive to other dogs when on lead, and people do this all of the time when she’s walking her dog. She asks them to not approach her and this one dog with their dogs, and they just ignore her. It’s the same with people who don’t instruct their children to ask before they approach a strange animal. These people need to just stop.

OK, that’s all I have to say about stupid human tricks today. Thanks for stopping by.