Stephen Vance, Editor
When I first moved to Meaford nearly 11 years ago, one of the first things I noticed about the community was the number of dogs – they seemed to be everywhere I looked. Having moved here from a much larger urban centre, I wasn’t used to seeing so many canines, and I confess I had a fleeting moment of regret about moving here.
It isn’t that I don’t like dogs, or at least it isn’t that I don’t want to not like dogs, I truly wish I could love them as much as everybody else in this town seems to; it would certainly make my life easier. The reality is that I have a deep fear of any dog, no matter the size, no matter the breed, and certainly no matter if the dog’s owner uses those famous last words – don’t worry, he won’t bite.
When I was five years old I was brutally attacked by a dog – a St. Bernard of all things. Ironically the dog was not off-leash and running loose, but rather it was tied to a pole in a children’s playground and left unattended while the dog owner visited a resident of the complex where the playground was located. The five year old me discovered the dog when I visited the playground, and being five, and being curious, I decided to say hello to the large, furry creature.
I learned very quickly that the dog was far less pleased to see me than I was to see him, and rather than wag his tail, or pant a hello, the dog took hold of my head in its jaws and flung me around like a rag doll for what seemed an eternity.
By the time I had freed myself from the grip of those powerful jaws and found my way to my mother, I must have looked as though I had stepped off the set of a horror film. Blood was everywhere, and I had gashes and bite marks on my head and face, including a very large gash just under my left eye, a tooth puncture through my bottom lip, and several wounds to my head and other areas of my face. Those wounds required more stitches than I had ever seen before or since, and 40 years later I can still hear the sound of that dog growling while my head was trapped between his teeth, I still remember the feeling of being lifted off the ground by my little five year old head, and I still feel that fear, that terror any time I am around any dog.
All these decades later, and though it has gradually shrunk over time the scar on my left cheek is still very visible, as is the puncture through my lip if I were to shave my goatee. I’ve often thought of how fortunate I am not to have lost an eye, or that the dog hadn’t got me by the throat. It could have been much, much worse, but that brief encounter with an unattended dog when I was just five years old has left a lasting impact in my life.
So when I see a dog running loose in a park, or when one runs toward me barking while I’m on the Georgian Trail (with its owner 100 yards behind calling out “don’t worry, he’s friendly”), I become terrified, and can even have a full-on panic attack – but I want to like your dog, I really do.
And as much as I fear them, I understand that many others love the heck out of them, and I appreciate that the vast majority of those dogs are as friendly as can be, but bad things can happen in an instant, which is why most municipalities have bylaws requiring that dogs be leashed when they are off the owner’s property, when they are in our parks, and on our trails, and our sidewalks.
The trouble is, being tied to a leash is not a natural state for a dog – dogs like to run free, and so they should, which is why we’ve seen many municipalities in recent years create leash-free parks, or designate leash-free areas in existing parks, and that is a great idea.
If there are too few of these parks available, however, humans will do what humans always do, they’ll chance being caught with their dog off its leash in a regular park. They’ll reason, and quite possibly reasonably so, that their pooch is friendly, their cute little doggie won’t bother anyone, and that is when bad things can happen. Ask any postal worker and they will tell you that nearly every dog that has ever attacked them was a ‘friendly’ dog, according to its owner.
The owner of the big beast that attacked me 40 years ago thought their dog was friendly too. I guess that dog’s owner had never considered that their pet might act differently when left alone, out of his care and control when a small child was around – and that’s what leash bylaws are all about, they are about having care and control of your animal in order to ensure that those around you are safe. Not because all dogs are evil, but because sometimes stuff happens, sometimes, the unexpected happens.
I’m pleased to hear that the municipality will be posting new signs in all of our parks to remind dog owners that their animals must be on a leash, but I think, especially given the high dog population in this municipality, that some consideration should be given to creating new leash-free areas in order to provide more options for dog owners. If you live on Centre Street, it’s a long way to the leash-free park beside the water treatment plant, so you might discount it as an option. If there was a park with a leash-free area closer to home, you might be more inclined to use it.
It would seem a natural fit to have a leash-free area at Beautiful Joe Park, for example, so perhaps let’s start there.
