Good Dogs and Their Owners

Good Dogs and Their Owners

The Worcester City Council will hold public hearings on the Master Plan for Dogs in what are now people parks and on dedicated doggie parks. The hearing is scheduled for September 15, 2016, 5:30 pm, in City Hall Chamber.

Right now no dogs are allowed in any City park on leash or off leash. Some people consider this regulation too restrictive. However there are reasons that such regulations were enacted, bad doggies owners.

Dogs as a rule are dangerous and dirty animals. Of course some doggies will disagree; they are likely the good dog owners.

The bad doggies owns clean up the shit that their animals leave behind. I have lived in our house almost 40 years and I only seen one doggie owner clean up their doggie’s shit. Most of the time I find the doggie shit on the lawn.

I image that most doggies owners when walking their dogs in City parks will not pick up their doggies’ shit. Such people are not good doggies owners.

I also know that many people of all races are afraid of doggies. Some like we Black people have been hunted by racists and their dogs. Other people especially children have a natural fear of dangerous animals. Even dangerous doggies  on a leash which is barking and acting aggressively.

When a doggies is barking and acting aggressively a good own will make the animal heel and shorten his leach and move away from the people being frightened. Sometimes even good owners will instead argue and say “Oh he does not bite”

There are about 900.000 reported doggie bites a year in the United States. This is more than auto accidents in the United States. It is likely doggie bites are under reported. There is around 700 doggie bites in Massachusetts a year.

In 1997 the City of Worcester found out it could not make all of the doggie owners pick up their doggies’ shit. Nothing has been done to ensure that ALL of the doggies’ owners will pick up their shit. This will mean unsanitary conditions in the parks meant for people and sitting on the grass and picnics.

There is no plan to stop the doggies, even with good owners, from frightening and terrifying people, especially children. These people who are afraid of doggies will eventually be driven out of the park.

I like doggies. I think there should be a doggie park built on City property near Coal Mine Brook. This piece of land was proposed by Manager O’Brien to be a park with a bike path to Regatta Point. It has not been a people’s park and so people without doggies will not be driven in fright out of the park, as would be case elsewhere.

Since Coal Mine Brook will be a doggie park only the doggies owners can easily impose a clean-up your shit rule and people without doggies will not have to put up with the doggies’ dirty mess.

It was not that long ago the City of Worcester CLOSED Worcester swimming pools with the pretext that it did not have the money to maintain the pools. Of course the children of the City who increasing Black, Hispanic, and immigrants suffered.

With doggies in the people parks some children will be frightened away from them, especially when the parks adjoin a playground.

Today the Worcester City Schools are overcrowded with up to 34 students in some classrooms. The City schools are begging people for money.

It does not  make any sense for the City to consider building 5 doggies only parks at a cost of $400,000 each when the Worcester Schools go begging?

I think one doggie only park at Coal Mine Brook as a pilot would be sensible. I do not think that spending $2,000,000 on doggies plus annual maintenance is sensible.

It seems that Mr. Rosen, the doggies owners champion, has become further color blind and failed to see the larger picture.