Dog owners irked by fence at Shoreview park

Do fences make good dog parks?

In Shoreview, where a fence is going up around a canine park along Rice Creek Regional Trail, dog owners are growling. They say that they take seriously the importance of self-policing, and that a fence would change the character of the park and the people who use it.

But Ramsey County officials say everyone has the right to use the trail without being surprised by an unleashed dog. A few people there recently told of tripping or even being bitten by unleashed dogs on a shared piece of the path.

Dog owners complain that their objections have fallen on deaf ears, while officials counter that the installation of a gated fence around the 20-acre parcel, begun this week, was never up for discussion. It had long been planned and wasn't in response to an incident, they said.

"We're trying to make it better for all users," said Greg Mack, Ramsey County's director of parks and recreation. The idea is to reduce the county's potential liability and decrease the chance that a non-dog owner will be surprised by an off-leash dog, he said. "I don't know how the boundaries take away from anyone else's experience."

This week, at the parking lot off Lexington Avenue, dog owners arrived mostly by car and either walked their pets on leashes or let them wander 50 or so feet to the fork in the trail leading to their park area. Joggers and bikers swept along, sharing the same length of trail that has been a point of human-canine convergence.

Jogger Mark Palen said he'd been knocked down by unleashed dogs on the path, and once been bitten by an old dog -- unleashed -- that didn't hear him coming on the trail and reacted out of fear.

He said he thought the fence was probably a good idea but added, "If people could control their dogs, you wouldn't need a fence."

Still, the fence as currently planned will not change that shared artery. Although future plans call for moving the parking lot farther from Lexington Avenue, the gate will remain well beyond the fork, off the main trail.

Not a new idea

The fence is not a prelude to resurrecting last year's proposal to charge a user fee and it is not a new idea, said County Commissioner Tony Bennett, who represents the area.

"It's been there since Day 1; that fence has been planned for many years," he said, adding that the county's plan was to install the barrier, as it has at other dog parks, as money became available. He said that most of the metro area's dog parks are fenced.

"The fact is, they're getting 20 acres of land. That's a big area, and dogs should be able to roam just fine in that area. They're lucky this land is available to be used for that."

Yaron Hemi, of Shoreview, who visits the park with his dog, Gigi, echoed other users' sentiments when he said he feared that the fence will draw dog owners who are attracted to a fenced park because they can't control their animals, and who turn their backs on their pets to focus on socializing with the other humans.

Inside the dog park the other day, Hemi and other dog owners, who all seemed to know one another, gathered at a picnic table for a few moments before taking off together, at their pets' heels, around the loop.

"With our park, you have people walking around and talking," he said. "It's a different thing when you're walking with your dog you have to be paying attention, you have to be interacting with your dog and the other people. That's the kind of community we have. That's the community we like. If there's a fence there, I can see it changing."

He and others said they don't understand how the county could switch from needing to raise revenues with fees last year to spending $15,000 on a fence this year. Rather, the county should do a better job of policing the shared trail, to make sure dogs are leashed until they get to the dog park, Hemi said.

"We want people leashing their dogs out there," he said. "Heck, it's dangerous for the dogs."

Or, the county should address a growing number of break-ins in the parking lot.

Bennett agreed, in part, although he noted that the $15,000 expenditure is a small piece of the park system's $570 million budget.

"We have a lot of needs in our trails and our park areas, but you may be afraid of dogs and you get bit and sue," he speculated. "The dog owner has the first responsibility, but guess whose next pockets they're going to go after? ... It's easier to enforce when you've got lines clearly defined by the fence."

Maria Elena Baca • 612-673-4409