GONE TO THE DOGS’ PARK
There’s a simple, easy beauty in dog walking. Almost anywhere you can go, they can go. Exceptions occur when officious councillors and puffed-up bureaucrats ban them from city centres, and when native birds are nesting on beaches. But, in between town edge and tideline, pretty much anywhere is wandering territory. God, we’re lucky, and so are our dogs.
The whole concept of urban dog parks, however, has become common in recent decades in response to the rise in dog ownership, and to provide interesting alternatives to pavements.
But decisions about where these parks are situated are fraught. In a time when developers and politicians are screaming out for land to build homes on to counter the housing shortage, I often look over our favourite dog parks and wonder, How long? How long before some witless, dogless dullard of a functionary decides townhouses would be perfect for Tawatawa Reserve or Tanera Park?
Tawatawa, where we often go in the afternoons, was actually a Wellington dump in the 1970s – Preston’s Gully landfill, they called it. When rain soaks the park’s earth to capacity, occasionally you’ll see an oily film floating on puddles and wonder what lies not far beneath your gumboots. On the park’s sloping flanks, small rivulets that spring up in storms have eroded areas
