A trip to the dog park

I found a news story today, from Aug. 22, 2014 about the Waggin’ Trail Park, but it wasn’t until about a week ago that I personally discovered the park and it wasn’t until New Year’s Day that we actually took our dog Rocky to try the park out.

You might not know what a boon such an “off-leash” dog park is, until you have a dog like Rocky. When we picked him up at Wayside Waifs 5 years, ago, they told us to not put him out in a fenced yard by himself — that he would dig his way out. So we tried the run-line that came with the house. It worked for a couple of years, until no matter what we tried, he seemed to find a way to get loose from the clasp that hooked him to the line.

So his only outside exercise is going on walks with the four of us, which doesn’t give him the sprints he so likes. We watch him carefully, but sooner or later he always manages to find his way out a door, and then he is a lightning bolt into the woods. After than all we hear is the thunder of his crashing back and forth in the woods until he decides to come back home a day or two later, sore, and often lame in a paw.

In fact, he slipped away Monday evening, and we were fortunate enough to get him Tuesday evening. The latch on the basement door had come undone, and when the garage door went up to let the car in — out he went.

So when we took him to the dog park on Thursday, he was mostly, but not completely, recovered from his “weekend warrior” sprint.

We got there, and before we got out of the car you could tell his senses were anticipating something. We led him out of the car on leash to the gate of the park, and read the rules. While we did so, we saw someone leash their dog in the park, lead them to the entryway double-gate, and then bring them out. All this time Rocky was perking his eyes and ears, snipping, and wondering why we weren’t going in.

We finished reading the rules, and then tried to figure out how to get in the gate. Despite having seen someone just come out, it seemed we couldn’t find the latch to get in — until a few moments later when another dog owner led their dog out of the park, and we found the magnetic latch, and realized exactly HOW HARD you had to push to get the gate open.

We led him through the first gate, and then the second gate. A couple dogs came around him to sniff as we led him in on the leash. It took a few moments for them to greet, and then we had enough space to undo his leash and let him go.

I expected him to bolt instantly, as he does everywhere else when he isn’t on the leash, but he didn’t. Instead he stayed near us at first, doing the greet/sniff routine with the dogs that came near, and then followed us in expanding circles as we walked around the path in the multi-acre off-leash zone. It wasn’t until we were about halfway around that he bolted off to a group of other dogs.

There were a couple of dogs that he got into this chasing game with. One dog liked to be chased and encouraged others to chase him/her. Rocky would keep up by doing smaller circles within the larger ones the other dog was doing to evade capture by the other couple of dogs involved in the chase.

Rocky would be involved in games like that for awhile, then go off on his own and explore part of the perimeter, then come back for more games. It took him awhile, but eventually I think he explored the entire perimeter, and only tried to stick his nose under the fence once, and never gave signs of trying to dig or get away.

He has always been a friendly dog, never seemed to realize that another dog would not want to play, but this was the first time we had tried him out in such a free play environment, and I was a little apprehensive about how he would respond, and how the other dogs would respond to him. A couple of dogs got a little rougher than I might have wanted, but all of them got along well with nothing to worry about.

We spent about an hour there, and when we pulled the leash back out to put on him, he slipped his neck into the harness without any complaint or attempt to escape. He even hopped into the car without complaint. He obviously had fun, had used up energy, but could have also gone longer if we had let him.

All in all, we plan to get him down there on a regular basis. Our hope is if he gets to stretch his legs and sprint there, he might work off some of the wanderlust that has him escaping into the woods.