Earlier this month, PetSmart Inc. partnered with the City of Detroit and the non-profit community organization Detroit Dog Park to bring a portable, pop-up dog park to a vacant lot in Detroit. This is the first official dog park in Detroit, providing more than 10,000 square feet of space.
PetSmart's P.U.P. (Pop-Up Park) is a shipping container that contains everything needed to create an interim dog park, including 340 feet of fencing, three Oops clean-up stations, three moveable, backless benches, lighting on and inside the container (powered by solar panels on the roof) and a storage closet. The shipping container serves as the park's point of entry and exit. Through the partnership, PetSmart supplied the P.U.P. and the City of Detroit will maintain the park.
PetSmart has currently supplied P.U.P.'s to two other Phoenix, Ariz. communities and hopes to bring parks to four more communities throughout the country by the end of 2014.
Barbara Walmer CPDT-KSA, CBCC-KA, KPA CTP, ACDBC
InfoStream Guest Author
As off-leash parks become a more popular
destination for urban dogs it’s essential we keep them enjoyable and safe. Educating the public about dogs is crucial to
accomplishing this goal. Most problems
do not come ‘out of nowhere’ and people need to understand more about dog body language
to avoid these issues. Aggression commonly occurs as a result of not reading
the dog’s body signals or as a consequence of inadvertently putting too much
social pressure on dogs. Space can be a
major factor!
People also have to teach their
dogs a recall. This not an easy skill to
teach, but it is a very valuable one. We
can work on teaching dogs to check-in and come when called by rewarding
successive approximations and using management tools, such as a long line. Dogs will do what gets them reinforcement and
this poses a problem with social dogs that run all over at a park. Whether their owner calls them on or not the dog
wants to play with other dogs, meet new people and smell new things. After all, they get to spend the rest of the
day with their owner and often, being around their owner predicts leaving the
park.
To teach recall we need to
start by working on the behaviour away from the park or distractions enabling the
dog to become comfortable and understand that turning away from distractions
are what we want. This takes continual
practice. In the beginning this skill can be taught with any dog at home and progresses
to being on-leash outside. When your dog
turns his head away from a distraction, pay him for it. Payment can be made using treats, a game with
a toy, special social interaction with praise and touch that your dog enjoys,
or access to a new direction he wants to go. We start with just adding reinforcement to the behaviour of turning away
and then add a cue to that behaviour; for example, “come” or “here”. Avoid using the cue until the dog displays
this behaviour consistently at a high frequency. Using recall cues by saying them when our dog
is distracted and cannot listen only encourages them to ignore it. The more dogs
are around low-level distractions in a controlled environment, the more they
learn that reinforcement happens for certain behaviour, and they will be able
to function in greater distractions. We
can help dogs understand that the goal behaviour is for them to come to us, by
rewarding them in our general vicinity.
The biggest problem with teaching
a dog recall is that we want to gradually increase the level of distractions
while keeping them successful with displaying the ‘turn away’ or ‘look at me
behaviour.’ We progressively increase
distractions and then add in distance, as the dog is successful with the each
approximation. Always have a management
tool, like a leash or long line, to be able to influence your dog as we want to avoid the dog not getting the
opportunity to indulge in the external reinforcement at the wrong time. Allow
your dog freedom and reward him lavishly for any contact with you.
What often happens is we use our
recall cue in our house a couple times and give our dogs some verbal praise. Then
we take Fido to the park, let him off leash and say our cue and Fido continues
to run around and ignore us. The changes
in criteria between the house and the park are vast, and the behaviour we are
wanting looks very different to the dog due to the distance and distraction
level. Start training your dog today for
this very important skill and you will see improvements in your dog’s recall
behaviour and your dog park visits will be safer.
Barbara Walmer CPDT-KSA, CBCC-KA, KPA CTP, ACDBC
InfoStream Guest Author
Living in an urban environment
changes the way in which both people and their dogs exercise and socialize. In
a rural setting, people tend to go to each other’s homes or the nearest town’s coffee
shop for coffee. Dogs run around loose
on the land with minimal leash or fence time and they have only a few dogs they
meet and greet; typically the neighbor’s dog. There is a lack of focus on
purposeful exercise as the dogs spend numerous hours a day of physically exercising
while outside. In contrast, people in urban settings are more likely to meet at a variety of eating and drinking establishments or malls. People go to gyms for exercise, due to the
more office-based employment, and dogs are on leashes and behind fences for a
lot of their lives. Many cities now have
off-leash parks or areas where dogs and their owners can converge to exercise
and socialize.
While some of these areas have natural
landscaping features others are just barren fields. Many people frequent the same parks on a
regular basis and the parks features, how convenient the location is, whether
their dog has certain ‘doggie friends’ they like to meet, or whether the person
enjoys the social atmosphere, influences these decisions. These parks can become a community asset, but
they can also become a drawback depending on the dog behaviour of the dogs in
them and the awareness level of the people using them.
Dogs as a species are social, but
just like people, some enjoy large groups while others are more selective as to
whom they spend time with. Some dogs
like rough, physical play, while others enjoy smelling the grass and bushes
while just being in the vicinity of other dogs. A dog’s dog skills are formed from many different factors, including: genetics, early nurture, socialization in the
past and present, age, sex status, training, along with individuality. With all these components it can be difficult
to determine exactly which dogs will do well at the off-leash park or mingling
with different dogs.
For many people the
best way they know to determine if their dog is okay to go to an off-leash park
is to take them and see what happens. To
add to the fog, many people are not aware of canine body language or have
misconceptions about it. “My dog is just
wanting to play,” is an often-cited phrase by some dog owners at the park. If your dog wants to play, no matter how
inappropriate the context, does that give him a free pass? But if my 10-year-old Golden just wants to smell the grass does that mean he has to put up with
the 10-month-old Boxer jumping all over him? What happens if my dog snaps at the Boxer. Is that “normal” behaviour and should we just
let it play out, should I leave the park with my Golden, because he doesn’t want
to play, or should the Boxer owner leave the park because he is too playful and
not under control? What could be a
compromise for both? Can owners
realistically work this out? What is
fair?
With dogs coming from many different
backgrounds and people wanting their dogs to get exercise and socialization,
how can off-leash parks be for all urban dogs and manageable?
PetLand Charities of Canada presented the City of Calgary with a cheque for more than $7,500 for the restoration of the Sue Higgins Park which was (and still is) affected by the Calgary Floods.
In store fundraisers, donations and volunteer clean-ups have contributed to the park's clean up. Parts of the park are still closed and a planned Improvement Project was delayed after the floods last June.
Sue Higgins Park is a 62-hectare greenspace in Calgary's southeast that offers pathways, hiking trails, a large off-leash area and much more. The mission of the Improvement Project is to enhance the park's natural environment and provide quality and compatible recreational activities by addressing the interests of the key park user groups, including off-leash, regional pathway users and nature enthusiasts.
This project complies with the City's goals of integrating recreational areas with pet-friendly areas, an initiative presented to Urban Animal subscribers at the Prairie Regional Conference and the Summit for Urban Animal Strategies.
Karen Stintz will be joining the delegates of the 2013 Regional Conference as their luncheon guest on Wednesday. Karen who is also a dog owner, was featured in the recent CBC/Bountiful Films production of DOG DAZED. She will briefly address her experience as the elected official in the middle of the Ledbury Park neighborhood war over off-leash dogs.
Karen grew up in North York and attended St. Joseph's Morrow Park. After receiving a BA from University of Western Ontario, she obtained a Master of Science degree in Journalism from Boston University and worked briefly as a journalist. Returning to school, she received a Master of Public Administration degree from Queen's University, and launched her present career.
"As a politician I have learned that there are two things that you never do. You never change parking restrictions and you never get yourself involved in a dog park."
Karen learned the hard way not to get between voters and their dogs. But it has becoming increasingly more difficult for politicians to get away from dog debates. Canine ownership has doubled in Canada over the past decade and all those dogs need somewhere to run, play, and evacuate.
A positive pet experience includes understanding how dog owners and other citizens can live together in neighborhoods that serve the purposes of all. Karen's segment of the Conference will set up the Pet Experience Project workshops, directed by Dr. Jason Coe during the afternoon.
