Wednesday, August 6, 2008

thoughts on this morning's meeting

i am glad to see the committee taking the reasonable step of gathering information before making a decision on the trails.

today it sounded like the biggest concerns are poop & uncontrolled loose dogs. although some will question just how big those problems are, probably not too many people going to argue against keeping the trails clean & our dogs from bothering other users.

this is a far cry from the working group memo which made many dog owners feel as though we were being singled out as the biggest source of trail conflict and degradation. i'm glad that happened, because now we are organized and have a seat at the table, but the whole thing could have been handled so much better.

director hall made reference to someone he knows who was running and had a dog come after him. the person was positioned so that the dog ended up biting his water bottle. not good. but neither are mt bike wrecks that cause people to be airlifted out. i would be curious to know how the numbers tally out on dog bites vs. bike wrecks. both are problems, just treat us the same. at least a person can carry pepper spray if they are worried about dogs. i know a dog owner who carries spray and has used it on other people's dogs who won't back off.

i am looking forward to seeing the final survey. a little disappointed that there was no tracking earlier in the day, because i think that the dog numbers would be much higher.

we'll see how it goes. the committee sounded pretty reasonable today, and willing to let enforcement work.

let's all keep up the good work!

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