Take me out to the dogpark……

We took our 1st trip to the dog park. This is a dog park at one of the cities busiest parks, Album Park aka Eastwood Park http://www.doggoes.com/parks/texas/eastwood-dog-park-aka-album-park#comment-10807.  Album park is a big well used park with lots of grass and mature trees, something that is not all that common in the desert SW.  Lots of activities go on in Album park and it  has one of only 3 fenced dog parks in the City of El Paso. 

When it was first put in, they placed it in an area of the park that wasn’t used a lot for football or soccer, it was on grass with some shade.  It was very nice with agility equipment built-in.  Part of the reason the section of the park wasn’t well used was it had a tendency to flood and having standing water in the area, not the dog park but right next to it.  Then several years ago El Paso had a 100 year flood and the water was standing everywhere, including the dog park.  Of course being on grass it is sometimes easy for pet owners to “leave” things behind when they picked up after their dogs and unfortunately because of the “leavings” they found e-coli in the standing water in the dog park or that is what they blamed it on anyway.   So they closed it down and then moved it across the path to an unshaded all gravel yard.  So we lost the grass/trees but kept the park. 

I had gotten out of the habit of going to Album park after the dog park closed and then moved so last night was the 1st time I had been to the new location.  I took Banner and her Mini Me Fifi.  Fifi is still working on her socialization, she is afraid of the “brown puppies” at our puppy playtime class and Miss Banner is a worrier so I thought we would enjoy a walk in the grass and then stop at the park for some socialization. 

It was funny they both knew just what to do with the agility course, they had a good time until a pair of young and silly pit crosses showed up with their people.  These youngsters were just too rambunctious for the girls, Fifi ran away from them being a big cry baby and Banner just hid from them.  I am a mean mommy and made them stay in the park.   I played with them on the equipment, that the other dogs and people didn’t seem interested in climbing or jumping.  Several other people and dogs showed up in the park, they were calmer than the wild pair and Fifi began to approach them.  She would not play with them but would follow them around and of course she showed her belly to a 13 year old toy poodle who was about the size of a soda can.  She did make friends will lots of the people.  Banner wouldn’t approach the other dogs but she did eventually calm down and just hang out or climb on the Aframe.   When some younger wilder dogs showed up I figured I’d asked the girls for enough and we left and happily walked around the park to the car. 

My plans for the summer include getting Banner and Fifi out and about more, we missed a lot of opportunities last summer with my work schedule but this year we are going to try to hit a couple of new locations every week.  Our next stop will be “Bark in the Park” at Cohen Stadium http://www.diablos.com/Schedule/UpcomingEvents/tabid/226/vw/3/ItemID/330/d/20100606/Default.aspx, it is also Quartermania so I’m sure the girls will get hot dogs along with their baseball adventure.

Banner and her Mini Me hanging at the park.