Community Comments : Don’t Blame City Dogs for Being Bad--It’s the Owners Who Are Brutes

ANN BRADLEY

Silver Lake

Dog Park: The 98% who are good citizens need to confront the 2% who ruin it for everyone.

Forget O.J., Cuban refugees or Haiti. What’s on the minds of many Silver Lake residents is the continuance of a dog park on the northeast slope of the recreation center.

I ardently support saving the fenced section that permits the dogs to exercise and socialize, and, perhaps more importantly, lets their owners build community and neighborliness--qualities vital to Los Angeles.

At a recent meeting moderated by Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, dog park advocates lauded the results of the dog zone: crime reduction, better behaved dogs, better neighbors. The preponderance of testimony revealed that, except for one or two vituperative souls incensed at the possibility of the rest of Los Angeles descending on a plot of grass, the majority of objections were about doggie poop and doggie fights--both the responsibility of doggie owners.

Apparently 98% of the dog park users do scoop the poop, do control their animals and do care about their own, and their dog’s, behavior. The complaints were about the 2% who don’t care about anyone but themselves.

The result of the two-hour community meeting was a compromise: Goldberg agreed to a one-year pilot project that calls for fencing off a section of the recreation center for the animals and their owners. Details will be worked out after consultation with the city attorney’s office.

Clearly, Goldberg’s meeting could have been about many issues: drugs, car theft, graffiti, a noisy late-night disco. Ultimately, it was about responsibility--not only individual, but the community’s responsibility to stop the 2% who ruin it for the rest. If we’re not willing to call people on their doggie poop, how can we expect to stop drug trafficking, gang violence and the widespread disintegration of neighborhoods? This requires the 98% to stop accepting the unacceptable, to stop being silent. We can do that by tapping into the same energy that brought us together to save a dog park. It starts with getting everyone to clean up after their dogs and themselves.