We took our 5 month old puppy here on a Sunday afternoon. Normally we would NOT do this- the trainers at the puppy classes we went to were adamant that puppies should not go near a dog park until 6 months if ever, due to the risks of diseases and traumatic experiences with bigger dogs- but her litter mates were all getting together for a reunion and we didn't want to miss it.
The park definitely exceeded our expectations. With one exception, the dog owners were extremely attentive. Nobody was sitting on their phone ignoring their dog.
The one exception is the reason this place only gets 3 stars. An older gentleman was not paying attention to his 4yo INTACT male dog who was harassing our female puppy. (He was trying to find the dog's poop, which someone else had to point out to him existed- he also hadn't been paying attention when the dog actually pooped.) Our puppy was clearly frightened, running away with her tail between her legs. We picked her up and shooed the dog away but he came back and wouldn't stop trying to hump her. We picked her up again and sat down on a bench to calm her down. The dog's owner proceeded to make a bunch of excuses and basically victim blame our puppy, saying that his dog never did anything like that before and there must be something on our puppy that he could smell, all the while barely doing anything to keep the dog away. The good news is that another older dog owner in the park proceeded to CHEW HIM OUT, asking if the dog had gone to obedience classes (followed up with a genuinely incredulous "Really????" when the harassing dog's owner said he had ) and then scolding the owner for not controlling his dog, pointing out that it's completely inappropriate for us to be the ones who sit out while the badly behaved dog runs free. Then the two owners got into a pretty heated argument for like 10 minutes. Finally the harassing dog's owner moved to the other side of the park and sat down with his dog so that we could keep playing. Thanks, owner 2!!!
Our puppy is totally fine btw, she played fine the rest of the afternoon and is showing no fear toward older dogs. So, no lasting harm, it seems. Just an unpleasant 20 minutes.
Tl;dr there was one badly behaved dog with a bad owner, but this behavior was clearly outside the park norms and another owner stepped in to shame him hard. read more