Dog Park

Horsham Township residents have spoken. Among their future needs for recreational facilities is a dog park. In a survey sent out in January to the township's 12,436 households and businesses, respondents were asked what recreational facilities would be in highest demand in the future. The answers from 1,128 respondents were no surprise, said township manager Mike McGee. At the top of the list was trails for biking, followed by paths for hiking; fitness areas; an outdoor swimming pool; nature areas, and an indoor recreation center.

When a class of Glassboro third graders decided to pitch the idea of a dog park to their Borough Council, they weren't playing around. At a council meeting in March, a little over a dozen students came with a statement signed by all their classmates. Each took a turn reading from it. They even had funding ideas. Then, for nearly three months, they heard nothing. "I thought they had forgotten," Sierra Highley, 9, said. But they hadn't. More than halfway into a year of municipal cuts and budget-pinching, the students at Dorothy L. Bullock School learned that the little guy - even really little guys - can make an impact.

A proposed dog park has some township residents growling. West Deptford announced last month that it was considering Rivergate Park as the site of a football-field-size area where dogs could romp and run free. Costing about $6,000, the dog park would be enclosed by a six-foot fence and include a separate fenced-off area for smaller dogs. Features such as play ramps and tunnels may be built by Boy Scouts, Township Administrator Gerald White said. "There are a lot of dogs in town," he said.

If a good park is defined by the variety of users it attracts, then Schuylkill Banks in Center City is one of the best. On any given day, the narrow waterfront trail is crammed with strollers, joggers, cyclists, dog walkers, Segway riders, sunbathers, and people just trying to find a quiet spot to read a book. So perhaps it is no surprise that some of those users want a bigger say in how Schuylkill Banks handles its first major expansion since it opened 10 years ago as a no-frills asphalt strip linking Martin Luther King Drive to Locust Street.

After Heidi, a 3-year-old mixed-breed dog, leaps to get a toy football from owner Felice "Lisa" Burday of Maple Shade, she is on the run. The two of them were joined Thursday at the dog park along the Cooper River in Pennsauken by Ken Davis of Audubon and Donna's Donnalee, his 2-year-old thoroughbred racing greyhound.

Dozens of angry Center City dog owners turned out for a community meeting Monday evening to protest plans to close the Schuylkill River Park dog run during the construction of a pedestrian bridge, and said they would seek an injunction Tuesday to temporarily halt the $6 million project. Although Fairmount Park officials are providing a makeshift dog run during the 16-month construction project, a group of activists says the space is not adequate to accommodate the hundreds of people who take their pets to the park.

Dog lovers are barking about a pedestrian bridge that will close a popular dog park and interrupt afternoon walks and frisbee catches with their furry friends. Construction of the bridge to connect the Schuylkill River and Schuylkill Banks parks, near 25th and Spruce streets, which began yesterday, will close the dog park until October 2012. Members of Citizens for Saving Schuylkill River Park said that they were not notified about the construction or asked for their input.

Center City pet owners who were angered by the city's plans to relocate the popular dog run at Schuylkill River Park during construction of a pedestrian bridge agreed Tuesday to hold off on their demand for a court injunction while they negotiate a temporary solution with the city, according to their attorney, Damon K. Roberts. The city promised it would hold off its plans to remove trees near the dog park to make room for construction equipment. At a heated meeting Monday, about 200 dog owners and neighborhood residents complained they had not been kept abreast of plans for the bridge, which will let people get to the Schuylkill waterfront even when CSX trains block the Locust Street crossing.

MATT'S SIBERIAN huskies are all leashed up with nowhere to go. He used to take his dogs to his neighborhood park, Chew Playground, in Point Breeze. His huskies, Jack and Ollie, especially loved the park in winter. "They swim through the snow like seals," says Matt, who asked that we use a fake name for him because he sometimes works with the city. "It's awesome. " But one day last March, a banner went up: "NO DOGS ALLOWED IN PARK," it said in big, red, capital letters. It wasn't clear if it was an official sign or the work of some vigilante dog opponent.

That can't be true. He wouldn't do that. Incredulity followed by outrage marked the solemn commemoration of the Irish Memorial at Front and Chestnut Streets yesterday morning, as rumors flew that City Councilman Frank DiCicco had proposed a dog park on the land directly south of the memorial. "I thought it was a joke, you know, that an Italian guy would play on an Irish guy on St. Patrick's Day," said Pat Gillespie, business manager of the Philadelphia Business Trades Council.

  THERE'S no easy way to say this, so we'll just come out and say it: There's a whole lot of poop on the sidewalks of Fairmount. It's no secret, either. Fairmount parent Jerilyn Dressler says that it's always been a problem, but that one weekend, while she was walking around the neighborhood with friends, the words "fecal minefield" came to mind. "It was all shapes and sizes," she said. "It was poop in its purest form; it was poop in doggy bags. . . . There were smears.

"I want to be the Trader Joe's of home builders," says George E. Casey Jr. , new boss at Orleans Homebuilders , which exited bankruptcy last year. Is the McMansion dead? "People are now storing their bikes and kayaks in the old dining room," Casey says. "They eat in the kitchen and the TV room. The living room is the playroom for their kids. Nobody wants a two-story foyer anymore. " What sells now? "Neat, quirky," with flexible floor plans. "We're listening to the way people live.

DEAR ABBY: May I respond to "Iowa Reader," the older woman who asked you where to turn when she needed to be hugged and listened to? I'm guessing she was married a long time and doesn't have any real friends - just people from her married days. I suggest she get a dog. Although dogs can't hug or hold, they do love unconditionally. I would have died of loneliness had it not been for mine. Through her, I have met other older single people on walks and at the dog park. She has given me a way to make new friends and find some company.

MATT'S SIBERIAN huskies are all leashed up with nowhere to go. He used to take his dogs to his neighborhood park, Chew Playground, in Point Breeze. His huskies, Jack and Ollie, especially loved the park in winter. "They swim through the snow like seals," says Matt, who asked that we use a fake name for him because he sometimes works with the city. "It's awesome. " But one day last March, a banner went up: "NO DOGS ALLOWED IN PARK," it said in big, red, capital letters. It wasn't clear if it was an official sign or the work of some vigilante dog opponent.

"Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war. " - "Julius Caesar," Act 3, Scene 1 The dogs of war are snarling. They strain forward, slavering, growling, pawing the air, eager to get at one another, to rend and tear and wet their lips with blood. As strangers in a dog park would, we try to pull them back, to exert control. But you feel your feet sliding beneath you, feel yourself carried, helpless and unwilling, into this fight they mean to have. It strikes you how poor a leash is reason.

DEAR ABBY: I live down the street from the town cemetery. It contains some old stones from the 1800s that are starting to crumble. This cemetery has become a favorite place for many to walk their dogs or ride their bikes. One woman lets her dog run off-leash and her young daughters play tag around the stones. Another neighbor allowed her children to set off fireworks. I was taught that in a cemetery, people should behave as if they are in a church.Can you comment on proper etiquette in the cemetery?

Center City pet owners who were angered by the city's plans to relocate the popular dog run at Schuylkill River Park during construction of a pedestrian bridge agreed Tuesday to hold off on their demand for a court injunction while they negotiate a temporary solution with the city, according to their attorney, Damon K. Roberts. The city promised it would hold off its plans to remove trees near the dog park to make room for construction equipment. At a heated meeting Monday, about 200 dog owners and neighborhood residents complained they had not been kept abreast of plans for the bridge, which will let people get to the Schuylkill waterfront even when CSX trains block the Locust Street crossing.

Dog lovers are barking about a pedestrian bridge that will close a popular dog park and interrupt afternoon walks and frisbee catches with their furry friends. Construction of the bridge to connect the Schuylkill River and Schuylkill Banks parks, near 25th and Spruce streets, which began yesterday, will close the dog park until October 2012. Members of Citizens for Saving Schuylkill River Park said that they were not notified about the construction or asked for their input.

Dozens of angry Center City dog owners turned out for a community meeting Monday evening to protest plans to close the Schuylkill River Park dog run during the construction of a pedestrian bridge, and said they would seek an injunction Tuesday to temporarily halt the $6 million project. Although Fairmount Park officials are providing a makeshift dog run during the 16-month construction project, a group of activists says the space is not adequate to accommodate the hundreds of people who take their pets to the park.

If a good park is defined by the variety of users it attracts, then Schuylkill Banks in Center City is one of the best. On any given day, the narrow waterfront trail is crammed with strollers, joggers, cyclists, dog walkers, Segway riders, sunbathers, and people just trying to find a quiet spot to read a book. So perhaps it is no surprise that some of those users want a bigger say in how Schuylkill Banks handles its first major expansion since it opened 10 years ago as a no-frills asphalt strip linking Martin Luther King Drive to Locust Street.