Dog Park!

We've recently bought a membership for the local dog park. Midas loves to play with all the dogs there. There are three areas, a small, medium, and large dog area, which are all fenced off. However, everyone takes their dogs into the large dog area, regardless of size. We would like for Midas to get some social skills by hanging around/playing with the dogs, but sometimes the bigger dogs are a little rough when they play with Midas. Midas will yelp when they get too rough...the big dogs will stop...then Midas will try to play with them again. We always check him after he yelps to see if he is OK. We were just wondering if we should wait until he is older to play with the bigger dogs? All the owners there are really nice and friendly, and love to see our dog run around with theirs.

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Permalink Reply by Corgibyassociation on December 23, 2008 at 10:07am

Wow, you have to pay for your Dog park? Wow...I can't imagine that. Be careful, our Weim learned a lot of bad manners at the park. He learned to fully hike up his leg. He also now is possessed to pee on every spot that another dog pees on--especially now with Freya and her accidents as well as in Petsmart.

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Permalink Reply by Tina on December 23, 2008 at 12:46pm

There are a couple of dog parks in the my area in MN. One of them asks you to purchase a permit-but they don't require it. They say it is to help the maintanence of the park-which I can see. they provide bags for poop, have a shelter with some heat that can be operated during the winter, have a small dog and large dog area, and they have functions every so often.

I don't know how old your dog is for sure, but you could try some of the puppy play sessions. Our local humane society had a pee wee play session for dogs up to 20lbs that we took Ein to until he outgrew it. It was wonderful because he got to play with other dogs for awhile and we learned some of what was acceptable dog behavior by the trainer.

Otherwise, maybe go into the medium dog area, even if there aren't currently dogs there. Maybe no one else goes in there because no one is there-you could start a trend ;)