Let barking dogs bark!

When I’m out and about early in the morning, when I’m strolling around early in the evening, I sometimes walk by the designated dog play area on Boston Common. It’s not a proper dog park: there’s no fence around it. But it’s a space where dogs are allowed to be off the leash, and folks come out in force before and after work for a big ol’ collective doggo playdate.

I love looking over at all those pups, cavorting around while their folks stand around in clumps chatting, keeping half an eye on their dogs, almost as attentively as they’d watch their kids in the playground. But while you’d probably holler at your kid if they were sniffing another kid’s butt, or barking, those are the types of behaviors that are perfectly fine for the canines around us.

Mostly. At one point, when dogsitting for my sweet and much adored dog-nephew Jack, I took Jack out for a walk. We ran into another dog and its person and, dogs being dogs, the new friends decided to check each other out, doggy style. The woman pulled her pup away, giving him a really strong yank. “Disgusting!” she said. Hmmm. I made a remark about dogs being dogs, but she wasn’t having any of it. I hope she wasn’t the real owner, but just a temporary caretaker who didn’t know anything about normal dog behavior, and what dogs acting naturally actually did.

Speaking of which, I have a neighbor – I’ve yet to see her in the Boston Common communal gathering – who is perfectly lovely. But she rarely takes her Frenchie out for a walk and, in fact, uses diapers and baby wipes on him. Please do not ask me how I know this. I just know. This woman had a previous dog who died, age 5 or so, from a stroke. I firmly believe that poor little one died from stress.

So, even some dog owners don’t know the first thing about dogs.

Then there are the neighbors of a dog park in Chevy Chase Village, a wealthy Maryland suburb, which is posted with signs that read “NO EXCESSIVE BARKING.”

What does that mean?

Excessive barking, in my experience, is a lonely or sad dog, howling all day when their owners are away. Not the sort of touch-and-go playing around that dogs do when they get together. A little woofing here, a little boofing there. A yip or two from the little guys. An occasional growl.

As to that ridiculous sign – after all, dogs can’t read - you really can’t stop a dog from barking unless you’re a meanie willing to clamp your dog’s snout closed or a pushover willing to fatten your pooch up by feeding them perpetual treats.

In Chevy Chase Village:

The drama began last fall when the village spent $134,000 to turn a muddy triangle of land into a park where pups could run off-leash in a fenced refuge. Chase tennis balls. Sniff one another’s butts.

But after about a month, signs decrying the barking of those dogs began appearing around the park. The village police started receiving almost daily calls about the noise, mostly from one particular neighbor whose house backs up to the park. By spring, the tension had escalated so much that the Chevy Chase Village Board of Managers called a public hearing. Then another in June. And another in July. (Source: Washington Post)

Dog owners who frequent the park are trying to keep their dogs quiet. And the town pushed the opening time from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. They’ve even removed mention of the park from their website, hoping to limit the number of folks who learn about it. (One of the objections that people voiced was the fact that outsiders were driving in from god-knows-where, i.e., DC, to use the park. So the town board:

…paid $1,300 for a woman with a graduate degree in epidemiology to spend weeks studying the behavior of the dogs and their humans.

The epidemiologist found that the vast majority of those using the dog park were locals who’d walked there.

But on the barking, no conclusion was reached.

The most aggrieved neighbor – the one who has called the police to complain a few times – is ticked off that “she had to turn on music inside her home so she didn’t have to hear the dogs.” She also claims to be a dog lover, a former owner herself. If her dogs dared to bark, she would take them inside. She’s advocating for the fence that fences the puppers in to be taken down, turning the dog park back into a plain old park park. I’m guessing that will keep dogs on the leash – and make life a lot less fun for the furry set.

There’s a public hearing today to decide the park, and the barkers’, fate.

The dog lovers are planning to crowd the hearing, have organized a letter-writing campaign and started a Facebook group, Save the Chevy Chase Dog Park, with more than 100 likes.

Maybe I’ll violate my no FB rule and get on and give them a like.

Sometimes when I walk by the local unofficial dog park, I stop and watch for a bit, thinking about my future doggo and how much fun it will be when Miss Pym (for Barbara Pym) or Rosco (for Roscommon) is flying around with her or his companions, sniffing butts and barking.

Maybe I have a high tolerance for barking dogs, but I’ve never noticed that the dog barking – and, in Boston, we’re talking dozens of frolicking dogs at prime times – is all that terrible.

To the Chevy Chase Park complainers, I say turn up the volume on your music or get yourself some earplugs. Dogs barking in a dog park is the sound of joy. Let barking dogs bark!