West 11th Street Park and Leashless Dogs

This morning I went birding at West 11th Street Park in my neighborhood. It seemed to be a nice little park with a lot of pine trees and underbrush for birds to play on. I saw a lot of backyard favorites like the Blue Jay, Carolina Wren, and Cardinal, plus a couple of common winter birds like a Hermit Thrush and Ruby-Crowned Kinglet. There was also a Red-bellied Woodpecker that let me get a nice look.

Unfortunately, the Urban Park Rangers are not enforcing the leash law here. I saw no less than 4 dogs off of their leash, and not a single dog on a leash. One of the dogs was so far away from its owner, the dog came up to me twice and I never saw him or her nearby. The last dog was especially noisy and scaring off the birds (including a couple Eastern Phoebes I had just spotted), so I walked away from the commotion. Later, that same dog and its owners and I crossed paths, and I was really just too upset to even look at them. I was content with just walking by with a cross look on my face, then the guy said "good morning" to me. I kept on walking. As his dog was jumping over me and his wife was telling the dog to get off, he said, quite crossly and rudely, "good morning?!" again and I mumbled "you know we have a leash law here," and kept walking. He spouted at me, as I was walking away, "yeah, I know... do you want me to put a leash on you?! Asshole!" I didn't press the issue and I kept walking, but in my head I was thinking "your dog is jumping all over me and scaring off the birds I came to see and I'm the asshole? That's rich." I called the Park Rangers when I got home, but I'm sure that couple was already gone by the time they would of gotten there.

I just hate it how dog owners assume everyone loves dogs. In any case, it's not the morning I was hoping for to an already stressful week.