A Tail of Two Dog Parks

Gracie and I hit the road yesterday for an overnight trip to Roseburg. Before I left, I checked Google for off leash dog parks in the area. Oregon Dog Fun has a great listing of dog parks from Portland to Ashland.

After checking into our dog friendly hotel (Holiday Inn Express) in Roseburg, Gracie and I headed for their dog park. Happy Tails Dog park is a fenced park - probably an acre or two. It has trees, several benches, a covered seating area for humans and two watering stations complete with those plastic kiddy pools - I bet those are well used in the summer months! When we arrived, Gracie and her pal, Hanna, were the only dogs there. Then bit by bit more dogs arrived including a 2 year old great dane who though Hanna (a pint size rat terrier) was a great playmate. Hanna didn't agree, so she headed straight for Gracie and stood underneath her until the great dane was distracted by other new arrivals. Gracie had a brief tussle with a golden retriever who didn't quite understand how Gracie wanted to play wrestle. Gracie has taught her pals at Minto that she can knock them down and then they can knock her down. This golden knocked her down, but wouldn't let her back up. As dogs often do though, there were no hard feelings and the two went on their separate ways to play other games.

On our way back to Salem today, I stopped off in Eugene to visit Trader Joes (will we ever get one in Salem?!). In my prior visits to Eugene, Gracie and I had visited the off leash dog park at Alton Baker Park. We stopped by there again today. This off leash park is also fenced. It is bigger than Happy Tails, but not as big as Minto. It also had two watering stations along with a covered seating area. Lots of dogs were already there. Gracie was pretty warn out from our other adventures, so we did a quick loop around the dog park and headed home.

I really appreciate the wide open space we have at Minto. The fenced parks are nice when the area is smaller, though. The fencing also is helpful for dogs and humans new to off leash areas. I guess if I was envious about anything, it was the watering stations and the covered seating areas. It sure would be nice to have potable water available at Minto - in the summer for hydration and in the winter for washing away the mud.

I think it is wonderful that Oregon has so many off leash areas for the dogs. Gracie and I are going to plan more trips to check these other park areas. Maybe we can bring some ideas back to make Minto even more special.