​Why Do We Need a Dog Park?

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We naturally tend to assume that off-leash parks are primarily for the benefit of our beloved dogs, but experienced dog park users know better. Off-leash parks offer just as many benefits to humans as they do to dogs: both to dog guardians as well as the wider community.

To keep your dog happy, healthy, and out of trouble, you’ll need to find ways to exercise her brain and body. If she enjoys the company of her own kind, visits to your local dog park can greatly enrich her life.

Benefits of going to the dog park include:

• Physical and mental exercise for dogs. Your dog can zoom around off-leash to her heart’s content, investigate new smells, wrestle with her dog buddies and fetch toys until she happily collapses. Many dogs are so mentally and physically exhausted by a trip to the dog park that they snooze for hours afterwards.

• Opportunities to maintain social skills. Dogs are like us, highly social animals, and many enjoy spending time with their own species. At the dog park, your dog gets practice reading a variety of other dogs’ body language and using her own communications skills, and she gets used to meeting unfamiliar dogs on a frequent basis. These valuable experiences can help guard against the development of fear and aggression problems around other dogs.

• Fun for pet parents. Dogs aren’t the only ones who enjoy dog parks. People do, too. They can exercise their dogs without much effort, socialize with other dog lovers, bond and play with their dogs, practice their off-leash training skills, and enjoy the entertaining antics of frolicking dogs.