Propsect Park: Where the dogs are

By LAUREN JOHNSTON | amNY.com

August 11, 2006

There's nothing Sam, Sebastian and Sugar love more than a trip to the Prospect Park Coffee Bark a Saturday breakfast hang-out for dogs and their people.

The trio of Golden Retrievers sets off for the monthly event in the wee hours with owners Paul and Chris Kowacki, who run a dog rescue in Orange, Mass.

Together they drive 200 miles to Park Slope, where the dogs romp and roam free over the park's rolling green lawns and the humans chat and chomp on donuts.

"Coming here, the dogs play in a big pack and it seems to reestablish their ability to socialize with other dogs," Paul Kowacki said. "They get here and just chill out."

And that, he says, makes the eight-hour roundtrip drive worth it.

Hundreds of dogs and their owners hit the park's lush Long Meadow and Nethermead for off-leash runs and swimming at the nearby Dog Beach nearly every day in the summer but the Coffee Bark draws an especially large crowd.

Prospect Park has long been a haven for the city's collared set. The Coffee Bark is organized by FIDO (Fellowship in the Interest of Dogs and their Owners), a Brooklyn canine group dedicated to preserving time and space for dogs to run off-leash activity they say is vital to a pooch's well-being.

Pups of every size and breed streak across the gentle slope of the yawning Long Meadow, and dive bomb into the swimming hole and when it comes to play partners, anything goes. Pint-sized pugs might tug and tumble with large, lumbering Labradors.

For dog owners, the park is a doggie Eden but there are those who would like to see the Sam, Sebastian, and Sugar's off-leash runs eliminated.

For a large group of park users, these off-leash hours -- 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. -- are a point of contention. Under city health codes, dogs are required to be on a leash no longer than six feet at all times. But the parks department unofficially has allowed off-leash "accommodation hours" for about 20 years.

A group headquartered in Middle Village, Queens - the Juniper Park Civic Association (JPCA) -- feels that's unfair, and they've brought a lawsuit, which, if successful, would put the dogs back on their leashes in every park in the city.

A judge has adjourned the case until Aug. 29 -- instructing Parks and JPCA to find a compromise or go to trial. The parks department declined to comment because the case is pending.

"The dog owners care nothing about the people around them who may be afraid of dogs," said JPCA president Robert Holden.

Holden's group says dogs on the loose break the law, pose a threat of attack and scare people away from spaces intended for public recreation.

"Our parks are going to the dogs," Holden said. "That's not fair and it's not legal. We can't have the parks commissioner telling people to break the law."

Meanwhile, dog people like FIDO president Mary McInerney and founding member Anthony Chiappelloni counter that canine emancipation has done good things for the park, the dogs and their owners.

"Before FIDO,' says Chiappelloni, who is known as the mayor of Prospect Park, "people wouldn't even come to this park. They were afraid to come in here. But once they saw the dog people here, they started coming and jogging and then the bicyclists came. It set off a chain reaction.

"This is the most natural environment you could have for a dog," he said. "The more natural environment the dog has, the better he is mentally and physically because he's really being a dog he's not just being walked around a block."

Holden's group maintains unleashed dogs are unpredictable and never really under owner control. "How can you have control over an unleashed dog unless you can outrun them," he said.

McInerney, a freelance graphic designer, says she benefits from the off-leash hours as much as her dogs Scout, a Golden Retriever, and Angie, a Labrador.

"I've made friends with people that I would normally, in the course of my daily life, never meet. It's my social life. It's my friends and extended family out here," she said.

As much as she loves the city, the loss of off-leash hours would be enough to push McInerney out of New York.

"If I can't come here with my dogs, if I have to keep them on the street all the time, I'd pack up my business and go," McInerney said. "It does mean that much to me."