Just a little update on my park situation here. After months of poop-scooping and hole-filling, I went to the ball fields today and saw this:
park pic

*sigh* Ah well, it was worth a try!

That's too bad. Too bad that more dog owners weren't more responsible for picking up after their dogs.

Is there any public land (BLM land or something similar) near you? That's where we take our dogs when we want to train long downs, long retrieves, etc. We pick up after them because I've been to ball diamonds before where other people wouldn't (similar to your situation, and I wouldn't be surprised if there off limits to pets now), but less worry about other people and signs restricting dogs.

"My dog isn't a pet officer, he's a working dog."

Other people have ruined it for all us here where I live. Everything is off limits to dogs now - the schools (even the asphalt playground), parks, you name it. We have a dog park that is sort of nice, but according to the vet, lots of dogs are getting sick there now - giardia especially. She said that many people are taking their dogs to doggie day care now, and they are passing around all kinds of parasites and diseases - kind of like kids who go to preschool that keep getting sick because no one wants to stay home when their child is sick. She said she gets dogs in her practice that have gotten the same parasite over and over again, and now she's having trouble getting rid of them - they become immune to the drugs. So she advises us not to go to the dog park either. You feel trapped!

This is a good reason for a club -- even the simplest kind of club, costing very little per owner, for folks doing nothing but ob and maybe FST and agility, where someone's enclosed field, warehouse, etc., is made available to members.

Here is something that has worked out well for years now: a farmer leases a fallow chunk of his land and an adjacent shed (with electricity for a night-light rigging) with a year-by-year lease. The area isn't enclosed, per se, but the property as a whole is, so safety is good. No water, but that is easily brought.

Sometimes imagination can come up with a solution. I betcha others here have ideas, too.

We have two parks in my area I use. Both are large (hundreds of acres) and mostly open cleared land with baseball diamonds, soccer and lacrosse fields. Plenty of room for everybody.
However still I have problems with other owners and loose out of control dogs though it doesn't happen much any more. I'm the local a**hole whose dog likes to start fights. So they've had to work on their own recalls. Or if they see us on the field, we're given wide berth with their dog on lead.

We had a set back a couple of weeks ago. Cass was doing pretty good on ignoring other dogs. So on the way out of the park one day I saw someone I recognized as a trainer in the local area working with a dog on distractions. I thought cool, I could do the same. We started doing heals up to about 30 feet or so, then back out, back in and some calm sits and watching. Nicely done Cassie!
Another car pulls into the lot, we turn around and heel back out to about 50 yards. The trainer was obviously waiting for this person as the meet and greet looked as such. I think the trainer told the woman the loose dog wasn't good for the work because the dog was put on leash. Excellent. We heel back make the turn and back out to here we started, nice halt, Cass didn't once look back, we about face right into two loose dogs nose to nose!!!!!! Cassie jumps right into one the other runs for mother, I reach in and pull Cassie off, the dog runs for it's life, I looked around for the owners thinking wtf, they go sauntering by muttering something like sorry about that.
This is from a trainer that I know takes pay for her work! I'm absolutely livid at this point. And leave a very terse nasty note on her windsheild.
No ones spoken to me since. And I don't care. It seems like I'm having to start from ground zero with my dog now as she's reacting to every dog within eyesight again.

Here's a sign I made up and put at the gate from every parking lot gate. It actually stayed up longer then I thought it would.
NO.....my dog does not want to meet your dog.

NO......I don't CARE if my dog NEVER meets another dog.

YES.....We have leash laws

Yes.....If you can't control your dog KEEP HIM ON A LEASH!

Funny no ones even asked if it was me who put it up.

Randy

I take my dogs to a number of 'fields' in my neighborhood to work them. I have been doing so for the last 5 years. For the most part, I have no problems with field officials or the local cops that patrol the area. (My dogs are off leash while on the field with e-collars as a back up just in case.) Most of the cops hang out & watch me work my dogs & hang out & chat with me. I am friendly with several of the k9 officers in town as well. I find many of the dog owners don't clean up after their dogs. I make sure that mine go before leaving the house & carry a bag for the rare occasion that they need to go while away from home. I have a bigger problem with people that have no control of their dogs. My dogs were attacked a couple of weeks ago by a pit bull that ran accross the field, from almost 2 acres away, draging the leash behind him. This dog ran up to my male & crashed into him & started a fight. My female jumped in & my dogs did what they had to do to protect themselves never going more then 15 feet away from me. They disengaged & came back to me when called & the dog ran back to where it came from. There was no way that I could have stopped this dog from attacking & the owner was running accross the filed way behind the dog calling his name. This dog could have cared less. The stupid man didn't even as much as appologize to me. I should have called the cops, but didn't. Big mistake! When telling a cop friend of mine about this episode, he was less than happy that I didn't call the cops. He said that this dog should have never been out in public. While this took place 2 baseball games were being played on this fied. I was over on the side by one of the diamonds working my dogs. IOne if the kids on the field could have been hurt had this fight esculated any further & one of them had gotten in the way of the fighting dogs. My dogs have grown up on these fields with baseball, football, soccer, gym class etc being played while they are being trained on the field. It will only take a couple of stipid people to ruin it for those of us that take the huge amount of time & committment that it takes to socialize, train & proof our dogs so that they CAN be out in public & be ambassodors for their breeds.
I also can't stand it when people walk right toward you with their dog even though you are purposly ignoring them & want their dog tp play with your dogs. I tell them that my dogs do not want to play with their dog & that I don't want or let my dogs play with other dogs. They have their own pack & don;t need to make new friends. If I wanted to have my dogs to play with other dogs & I'd go to the local dog park....God what a horror! I would not be caught dead there! Talk about a fight looking to happen

ANNE!! Hi!!


And back to our regularly scheduled thread ......

 Quote: randy allen

Here's a sign I made up and put at the gate from every parking lot gate. It actually stayed up longer then I thought it would.
NO.....my dog does not want to meet your dog.

NO......I don't CARE if my dog NEVER meets another dog.

YES.....We have leash laws

Yes.....If you can't control your dog KEEP HIM ON A LEASH!

Funny no ones even asked if it was me who put it up.

Randy

That is awesome! I love it! Made me think of when a very young child come running from 100yds away up to my GSD who is off leash (but had an e-collar on) and I was in control of her, but then the mom realizes that her child is coming toward us. The lady apologized and asked if my girl was friendly and the whole "does it bite?" thing. I said any dog can bite no matter what size, and told her that I would never, NEVER let my child go running up to an unknown (or known for that matter) because of what could possibly happen. She understood and was like, yeah that makes alot of sense. DUH

Too many people think that it's ok to pet another persons dog without permission (also had this happen-ARG!) or just walk up with their dog off leash and say "is your dog nice/does s/he bite?", well sure s/he's nice and hell yeah s/he could bite, but you better get your dog on a leash and or we're going to have a problem.

Sorry if this is off topic, I'm done now.

Hi back at ya Connie! I'll talk to ya soon.

Keleah, you are correct about people just walking up & asking & expecting to pet you dog. They are quite surprised when my reply is NO. Their next question is usually...are they friendly? I just say that if they were dangerous, they would not be out in public but that has nothing to do with why I do not allow strangers to touch my dogs. I feel that is enough of an explaination don't need to discuss it further. That is usualy enough to make them go away. My dogs have been encouraged to ignore people when they are out in public & therefore will completely ignore anyone that is around & totally focus on me. Even if I take them into the bank or store they just ignore people. The only exception to this is when they are very young pups going thru a socialization period when I allow people to interact with them at my descrecetion. BTW....You don't HAVE to allow people to touch your pups to socialize them. I choose to do so under certain circumstances at my descretion. From the very begining, my dogs go EVERYWHERE with me & therefore are expoesed to all kinds of things from day one & that makes them comfortable in public venues of all kinds. I have VERY social dogs that are comfortable everywhere but are not looking to anyone but me for intereaction. They are happy to play or get attention from visitors in my home when told it is ok to say hello. They just don't need to see everyone that they meet to be their new best friend or treat supplier. This includes people & dogs!