I am a dog person OP and let mine off leash in wooded areas, just to give some perspective, and I think you are in the right.
For them to swear at you is wrong and I would have your local animal control number in your phone so you can call them whenever you see it happen
Also, If it happens at the same time every day, you can ask them to sit over there and keep an eye on it for you and do some enforcement. if they are not busy they will.
When I walk mine in the woods, I come out near a playground. I always put mine back on the leash before we get close to the playground itself.

Also, please don't call 911 for an off leash dog.

I have watched, horrified, as dogs have turned an open space area in a rich person part of Arlington into a pissed-on patch of yellow grass and dirt. What folks don't realize, when they buy a house next to a park, is that parks are double edged swords.

Perhaps you can notify the authorities and let them know this is happening often.

Request that you remain anonymous and tell them your side of the story.
Hopefully they will increase their visibility around the park, at least during peak hours.

OP, you're in the right and they're in the wrong. I'm a doting dog owner and I wish our dog could be off leash in the park at the end of our street, but it's not allowed and I respect the reasons for that. We used to have a very dog-aggressive dog and other people's off-leash dogs drove me nuts: I didn't want my dog to get into a fight with their dog, but when their off-leash dog would approach my on-leash dog, sometimes it would happen: I would of course back away, but when the other unleashed dog followed it sometimes caused problems.

I sort of get people letting their dog off leash when the park is empty, but if people show up and someone says, please put your dog on the leash, I agree: call the authorities if they don't do it right away.

They are really stupid. It annoyed me to no end when my 100 pound tall beautiful husky would encounter unleashed dogs who would run to him and put him in protective mode for us his owners. The dumbass ownerd of unleashed dogs never learn they could hurt other people or anomals or even get their own dog hurt.

OP again. Thanks for the responses. When a dog owner responded with "F you" when another parent asked him to leash his dog, we did call the non-emergency number and the police came. I will do this again in the future but was hoping to find a less antagonistic approach.

I was hoping to get a perspective from the owners who feel like this is their right or whatever--since I see it so often and so rarely say anything I have to imagine that at least some of them are perfectly reasonable and would not respond with profanity when told that their dog is scaring a small child. But I guess they're not posting on DCUM about this.

Call the Park Police. I wouldn't call 911.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We had this problem in MoCo and started calling the police regularly. After a few weeks of aggressive enforcement and thousands of dollars in tickets the problem has mostly abated. But we still call 911 when we see it.

911 for an off-leash dog? You'd better watch it, when you need an ambulance they're not going to come.

See, bad dog owners=not smart enough to know how 911 dispatch works.

I would call 411 (nonemergency number) and ask what you should do for this ongoing problem--video, call 911 when you see the problem, give an idea of the typical times of day...

Allowing ill-behaved dogs to run loose in a kid park would _not_ be looked upon kindly in my part of Arlington.

Oh, and they won't be diverting ambulances--at least in Arlington, a police car (or possibly animal control?) would respond to a dog problem and an ambulance would respond to a medical problem.

Anonymous wrote:We had this problem in MoCo and started calling the police regularly. After a few weeks of aggressive enforcement and thousands of dollars in tickets the problem has mostly abated. But we still call 911 when we see it.

911 for an off-leash dog? You'd better watch it, when you need an ambulance they're not going to come.

We had this problem in MoCo and started calling the police regularly. After a few weeks of aggressive enforcement and thousands of dollars in tickets the problem has mostly abated. But we still call 911 when we see it.

Good luck getting these people to stop. There is a guy on our listserv who basically said that he knows it's illegal, but he just doesn't care and will continue to let his dog off leash. He said if anyone had a problem with it he suggests they get active with law/law enforcement.

Entitled assholes.

Do. They'll station a cop nearby for a few days and he'll hand out a slew of tickets. For the next couple of years you'll be safe, then someone will have to call the cops again.

Don't blame all dog owners. There are self-absorbed people of every ilk breaking laws of all sorts. Just call animal control and report it.

We live in Arlington next door to a park. We've lived here for years and in that time I've seen dog owners walking their dogs off leash and/or using the park as a dog run on a near-daily basis.

I've seen the whole gamut--on the "likely harmless" end, very well-behaved dogs or dogs who are so old they can barely walk and therefore pose little threat. I've also seen owners who seem to think they have their dogs under voice command but are proven wrong when their dog runs full-speed onto the playground or out of the park entirely.

I have kids, one of whom is terrified of dogs, and the unpredictability of going to the park and finding dogs off-leash running all over has only made this worse. I get that owners may feel that their dog needs exercise and/or is super well-behaved and therefore deserves to have some off-leash time to run and play. And when the park is deserted I either don't know or, if I notice it out my window, don't care.

But in recent weeks when either my DH or I has asked an owner to please leash their dog, we have gotten major attitude (and today, aggressive yelling). I think I get the arguments against going to a dog park (there are 2 within 3 miles of where we live), but I really don't get the need to take your dog to a park full of kids and have them off-leash, in violation of the law.

Why do dog owners do this? I should note that this is an unfenced park next to a very busy street, and I worry about a running toddler getting hit by a car--it seems like a dog owner might worry about their dog getting hit?

When this has been brought up on our local listServ the dialogue becomes super ugly so I don't have much hope of resolving this in a neighborly way--nor do I actually know any of the owners I see with off-leash dogs. But I'm hoping to understand it a little better from the other side because after today I'm tempted to call the cops every time I see this.