When my dog passed away in late 2014, my oldest dog Buster was left without a companion. In early 2015, my heart was captured by a photograph of a beautiful Pointer crossbreed called Jenny who was in Monaghan County Council pound. Jenny was destined to be euthanized if she wasn’t claimed after 7 days so I knew I had to act quickly- I called the pound and picked her up the next day!
Despite all my experience with dogs after being a veterinary surgeon for 16 years, I was not prepared for what followed. Although Jenny appeared to be your typical rescue dog; a little underweight, didn’t always eat her food and chased our cats, these things improved over time. What didn’t improve was her behaviour walking on the lead and she had a fantastic ability to escape from the garden! After many hours spent chasing her around our neighbourhood we were forced to improve the garden fencing and introduce rules about opening the doors.
I was left with a very high energy dog, with a poor recall, so I set about looking for secure areas to allow her to get some quality exercise. We found several privately owned dog parks but most were over an hour and a half away. Then we found that Belfast City Council operates two public, secure off lead dog parks which we began to visit frequently.
