It may sound hard to believe, but for almost a year residents of Lincoln Park have been waging a bitter little turf war over dogs.
“We were in Trebes Park having a picnic and planning our annual garden walk,” says Tom Lawson, who lives about a block from the park. “But there was this dog owner with three dogs running loose in the park. The dogs kept getting into our food. We said, “Do you mind if you leash that dog?’ And her first response was giving me the finger. Right to my face. I said, ‘Oh, that’s really mature.’ It bothered me a lot.”
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“There’s not a lot of open space around here and we want to create a beautiful park,” says Lawson. “But these dogs–not all of them, just the ones off of the leash. You’re sitting there enjoying the park, and all of a sudden some dog comes along and takes a crap right in front of you–what a lovely sight. Or maybe a couple of dogs get into a fight. Or they’ll get carried away and knock a kid down. That happened to my grandson. The owner didn’t even apologize. Some of these owners have the attitude that the rest of us owe them something.”
The dog walkers confirm most of the facts in Lawson’s account, but they assess them differently. For starters, they cannot understand the antipathy toward their dogs. They admit that on occasion some dogs do bark. Or get too affectionate. But they’re well trained. They come on command. They don’t bite. What’s to object?
The dog walkers then decided to try a new tactic: reconciliation. They called Ted Wrobleski, president of the association. They bought him lunch. And they unveiled the following set of self-enforced guidelines for dog walking in the park: “Dogs must be kept under control. Dogs must be leashed during events. Dogs must (always) be cleaned up after. Dog owners and non-dog owners alike must be respectful. Use common sense. Dogs are forbidden on the playground area at all times.” Wrobleski eventually agreed to have the matter discussed at a November meeting of the association.
Hartman and two other dog owners, Virginia Holden and Michael Ginn, wrote a letter to the association accusing it of “mischaracteriz[ing] neighborhood sentiment” by mentioning in a newsletter article “only a few letters that [it] received in opposition–some suspiciously duplicitous and even unsigned.”
“I told them they could clear the land out there and make a dog run,” says Lawson. “But they said it’s too much work. Can you believe that? We have people who donate their time for the garden walk and these guys won’t even lift their fingers to make a dog walk for their dogs? They represent the selfish generation of the 90s. It’s all me, me, me–what can you do for me? I can’t feel sorry for them. It’s like the guy who lives next to the el tracks and complains about the noise. If you’re worried about having space to walk your dog, you shouldn’t have moved to the city. Go live in the country.”
