More on Dog Soccer

We were copied on this email:

I had just about given up this fight after going up against one of the most cynical, arrogant abuses of wealth and privilege I have
ever personally witnessed during my 32 years living in the city. I have been working late and unable to visit the park before 9 pm on weekdays but I intend to file several complaints to 311over the next weekend and next week.

I spent many years visiting the park and writing observations of the colourful Jamaican and other West Indian Dreads of Nellie's Lawn and other foot ball pitches in the Long Meadow. In those
days an offleash dog was a rare nuisance. Back in 1997 I observed some white teenagers getting cursed out "Bombo Claat" and embarrassed right off the field after their unleashed dog disrupted the game. The weed they were smoking might
have impaired their judgement.

What is the excuse for the arrogant dog owners who have taken over the park today? That they have "won" and can do whatever they want since nobody will stop them? If I shared their
ideology I would be doing the same thing. Who's going to stop me?

I offer the example of my brother who moved down from canada last year bringing his wealthy girl friend and a huge one year old siberian husky to live in a kensington apartment not far
from the park. In the old days no one with sense would want to keep such a vigorous animal in the city..it's farking cruel..but now my brother was like, "Oh I can just let him run loose in the nethermead." This was right after the so called NYCDOG "victory".

I had a big argument with him about the nethermead politics. He didn't understand why I was so against letting dogs off leash there. Soon he was paying someone to let this huge animal run off leash in the nethermead for an hour a day in the early afternoon. This dog was very aggressive. It actually tried to KILL an elderly dachshund when my brother brought the husky to visit someones house; my son and his fiance witnessed this
near tragedy. I don't know how this dog got on in the nethermead with the other dogs but I wouldn't want that thing running around anywhere near me or my dog.

In any event an hour a day proved insufficient exercise for an animal bred to work all day pulling sledges in the boreal woods. The off leash hours made this dog neither tired nor happy. On the one unhappy occasion I was in the same room with it, this beast kept scratching my legs and sticking its nose in my crotch. It grabbed my 18 year old niece from behind and humped her. There was absolutely no training because the stupid girlfriend thought it was "cruel" to cause the slightest smidgen of discomfort to this dog and would not allow it to be kept in a crate while they worked. When I criticized this behaviour and lack of training my brother claimed I didn't "understand the breed". Eventually the dog destroyed their apartment and they sent it back to the breeder in Canada.

Maybe if my brother had been willing to let the husky pull him a la Cesar Millan on inline skates around the park circle several times a day, it would have worked. But these oh so busy people without time to do anything but make money think they can impress their friends with an active dog breed because Tupper Thomas handed them Prospect Park all tied up with a bow and ribbon for them to use. If they pay somebody $30 or $40 a day to entertain their mutt while they are working then everything's peachy keen. Maybe.

Offleash time in the nethermeador elsewhere in the park is no magic bullet for exercising dogs. It's actually a very poor way of exercising dogs. Hand walking around the park roadway circle for several miles is a much better way to condition dogs -- this is how I chilled my pit bull out when she was younger. The tired dog is a happy dog mantra may be true as far as it goes, but only woefully unfit dogs and tiny teacup dogs get tired after lumbering around the park for twenty minutes while their owners stand around and talk bullshit. To really exercise a dog properly you need to exercise your own damn self as well. Real exercise and effort is the exact thing the lazy FIDO dog owners want to avoid at all costs.

Meanwhile, Tupper responded to the email to her we reported yesterday as follows: “Thanks for your observations. I will check it out personally. I have had no complaints on this issue.” Now of course Tupper is almost certainly lying on the last point—for one thing, as we reported a couple of Sundays ago, we filed a complaint with 311, whose operator told us that the complaint would be forwarded to DOPR; and Tupper is the Prospect Park administrator. It remains to be seen whether she’s lying on the first point as well; our correspondent reports that tonight their were 21 loose dogs on the Nethermead at 5:30pm, but no Tupper Thomas. Our correspondent began to videotape the people and their dogs when a small group of black teens started to cross the meadow. They were afraid to walk near the dogs and skirted the trees in the northwest corner. As they passed in front of me I could hear them teasing one friend saying, "run here comes one now." The video will be posted shortly.