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FEATURE ARTICLE Dog Area Opportunities
Serving a new group of users and making it pay for itself
Dogs are man's best friend and park users' worst enemies. Dogs running free off leash are an enforcement problem and a public relations problem. With shrinking lot sizes or no lots at all, dog owners want and need an area to exercise their dogs. They want to enjoy parkland with their pets. But general park users don't want strange dogs running rampant in their park. The Lake County Forest Preserve has found a way to serve both dog owners and general park users peacefully. And, just as important, the program is nearly self-sustaining. The district didn't start out to build dog exercise areas. A few hunting dog owners wanted a place to train their retrievers for competition. The district had an old borrow pit pond along a state route that was out of the way of any other users, and the group asked if they could train their dogs in the pond. They got permission, and the floodgates opened. Other dog owners saw dogs offleash and having fun in the pond and they started using the area, too. So the district officially declared the site a dog training area and set up a permit process. We expanded, adding new sites as well as parking, fencing, more formal regulations and then additional fencing. Now, we have four exercise areas ranging from 30 to 68 acres, giving us one in each quadrant of our service area. These separate special-use areas generate most of the cost of the operation after site maintenance; ranger police and materials costs are added up. The cost of rule enforcement and fee collection is an expense to plan for carefully. Daily fees are a great source of revenue, but require staff time to collect and count. We learned many lessons over the years and stepped into a hornet's nest or two as people reacted to changes in how we operated 'their dog areas.' We have seen for ourselves—and have confirmed from other groups—that dogs offleash act less territorial and play together with few incidences. But a couple other lessons apply to any program or facility. First, start with regulation and policies in place and fine tune them as needed. Don't wait to respond after the users have set up use patterns or expectations. Second, set your fees high enough to be self-supporting from the start. Our biggest customer complaints came when we changed our user fees as we moved the program from below break-even to nearly self-sustaining. We originally charged the user fee to the dog owner, not the dog itself. This led to the problem of professional dog walkers bringing in large groups of dogs. We were collecting the same fee we would from owners with a single dog, and regular users objected to the fact that the dog walkers brought in 'packs' of dogs.
We switched to issuing permits to the dogs individually. Each dog is registered and given an annual tag to place on its collar. This allows us to track the dogs shot record and owner information, and we have the owner sign a hold harmless waiver for the district and an agreement to follow all the rules of the dog area. We consider the dog areas special-use sites, which are permit-only areas. Failure to follow the rules of the area is grounds for forfeiting of the right to use it. Quick action is needed to revoke permits for dogs and owners that do not 'play well with others.' This has been a very rare occurrence in our many years of running dog exercise areas. Picking and Preparing a Site If you re setting up a site, look to rolling terrain that is ill suited for sports fields. Or, a subdivision out-lot dry detention basin that has been 'gifted' to the park district may be a creative use of an otherwise lost site. Water features are a plus for customers who will use the area to train their retrievers. A pond could be added as a detention or retention basin if one is required by local ordinance. Drinking fountains for the walker and water for the dog are an additional cost to plan on. And parking is another issue. Your site selection should also be in keeping with your mission. We are dedicated to preserving and restoring native areas. Our old borrow pit pond was surrounded by mixed woods. The other three sites were already disturbed agricultural areas that were cut off from other parts of the preserve by roads or other barriers. All are along major state or county roads. 40 | Illinois Parks and Recreation DOG AREA OPPORTUNITIES We took our isolated plots out of production and worked the soil to get rid of the crop furrows. We planted either a prairie mix or a heavy-duty turf mix. We created several open-mowed turf areas for dogs and owners to play in short grass, and we've mowed trails through the tall grass to make walking loops. The dogs either walk beside their owners or run out into the tall grass to have fun. Agencies with smaller sites can use all turf.
We learned to give the turf areas two cool growing seasons to get well established so they can handle the wear of hard use by the numerous dog owners. We use wood chips in areas of heaviest wear to keep them from getting muddy. We have plenty of wood chips as a by-product of clearing invasive brush. We fenced all our dog areas with four feet of non-climb horse fence with 2" by 4" squares on tee posts every ten feet and tension posts every 100 feet. We use split rail fencing to enclose our parking lots and entrance ways. This provides a better look than plain fencing and sets a clear boundary for vehicles. The parking lots are on-leash areas.
We haven't had any large dogs jump the fence trying to escape, but we have had problems with small dogs crawling under the fence. To check the fence line and gates for any small-dog sized gaps, we use the 'boot test.' If a steel-toed work boot can slip under the fence, so can a dog. It usually only takes pounding the tee posts in a little deeper to correct this problem. Double entry gates between the exercise area and the lot keep dogs from escaping to greet a new dog in the parking lot. A wooden threshold board may be needed to maintain a narrow gap under the gate. All of our sites have entrances that are off main state or county roads to allow easy access. Our biggest delay to starting construction on any of our exercise areas has been getting the approvals for an entrance on these main routes. Allow some time for outside agency reviews and approvals. We use a combination padlock with a new combination each year for the entrance gate to our dog areas. Annual pass holders get the combination. This eliminates the need for staff to open the gates each morning. As part of their normal rounds, our rangers close the sites each evening and collect the money from the daily fee boxes. Rangers will stop in and check the site during the day to collect fees, check permits and, most importantly, smile and listen to our users. This moderate policing makes users feel safe and re-enforces the need to hold annual or daily passes. Every day, we check to make sure we're fully stocked up on Mutt-Mitts ™ for the dogs and toilet paper, for the sites that have comfort stations for the owners. Providing bags and trash cans helps alleviate having large quantities of animal waste under foot. Signage and enforcement are critical in teaching users how to enjoy the site and keep it attractive for the next user. Peer pressure also helps. If everyone picks up after their dogs, they will report anyone who doesn't. On a regular two-week schedule, we close two of the sites at a time to allow our staff to mow, collect trash from along the trails and to do any other major maintenance within the area. That way at least two sites are always open. The work takes less than a full morning. We keep mowing to a minimum, and looped trails can be moved year to year to let an area heal from overuse. Periodically moving benches, tables and trash receptacles allows areas to recover during the growing season. July/August 2003 | 41 DOG AREA OPPORTUNITIES
Planning the layout of these facilities, its operation and how to structure the user fees should be done well before breaking ground. Policy and procedures should be established before opening. Users of these facilities quickly establish daily and weekly routines and develop a great sense of ownership, so they will meet any change to the site or fees with great resistance. What to Charge Currently our fee and tag program allows use of all our dog exercise facilities within the district. To cover our operating costs, we increased our fees for calendar year 2003 to $40 per year for the first dog, or $4 per day per dog, for in-county users and $110 per year, or $9 per day per dog, for out-of-county users. We charge each additional in-county dog $17 and out-of-county dog $55 for its annual tag. If you think you may open more than one site, consider site-specific tags rather than the district-wide tags we use. Selling permits by site will allow you to close sales of yearly passes at one site once it has reached its capacity. We are lucky that with four sites, one in each corner of our county, we have a good balance that has reduced the crowding we experienced when we only had two sites. 42 | Illinois Porks and Recreation DOG AREA OPPORTUNITIES The Outlook In growing communities, the popularity of this type of facility should increase, given the boom in townhouses and the reduction of lot sizes. Even though I've talked about dogs as the user and tag holder of these sites, these really are people parks. I've seen more social interaction in dog areas between fellow owners than along our numerous trails. The personal bubble is removed and people interact as fellow pet owners. The dog areas are the gateway into our system for many people and may be the only forest preserve amenity they use. Many visit daily and most come at least once a week. Our dog owners are strong supporters of our system because we recognized their important needs and met them. In these days of property tax caps, having happy fee payers and supportive taxpayers is a double bonus.
CRAIG BRUSKA
July/August 2003 | 39 |
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