Temporary Fence

One of the ways that we might be able to have off-leash this summer is if we can convince the city to set up something temporary until Swift Run gets off the ground. We've discussed this here before and it came up again at the Ward Park meeting last week.





Many folks seem unclear on what this would look like. I'm posting some photos of the temporary dog run that Saline set up last year while they were reseeding the Mill Pond Park Dog Run. As you can see, this is temporary snow fence, which the city most likely already owned for use in winter months, held up by steel fence stakes, which are also probably owned by the city. Thus the costs must have been quite low.

When I have suggested this in the past, I have heard concerns about keeping this type of fence erect. I don't know if something special was done to the fence at Mill Pond, but in the month or two that it was open I went several times per week and never saw sections falling down. The gateway was a bit of a problem. (seen in the third picture) All that was done at Saline was to tie some wire around the top slats where the fence came together so that people could hold the ends together when they came in. This ad hoc gate fell down occasionally and people sometimes found it difficult to close properly. If that is too much of a worry for Ann Arbor, I'd suggest getting a single chain-link gate, either set two posts for it or get a free-standing temporary piece. This obviously would add to the cost, but we are still talking about much lower numbers than even the pittance that Parks is willing to spend for this project.

One other note - you'll notice that a children's play area is located very close to the dog run. As far as I know there were never any problems with interactions between dogs and children, nor were there any between dog owners and children. This is a concern that we hear very often, if dogs and their owners come near play areas, the children will be in grave danger. The Saline example proves quite the contrary, several times when I was there, parents would bring their children over to watch the dogs. Dog owners and parents should not be set in opposition to each other the way dog park opponents seem to think is natural. In many cases they overlap and in most cases we get along splendidly.