Dogs' best friend: Dix Hills resident works for access at Long Island parks

On any given day, you might find Ginny, Sophie and Cody out walking at Heckscher Park in Huntington. That’s Ginny Munger Kahn, president of Long Island Dog Owners Group, an organization that seeks to increase outdoor access for dogs around the Island, and her two glorious golden retrievers.

"My main exercise is walking my dogs," said Munger Kahn, 66, of Dix Hills. "That’s what I love to do: I don’t run; I don’t bike."

Dogs, like people, should have access to parks and beaches, opined Munger Kahn, a retired financial journalist.

"The best way for a dog to get really good exercise is to play with other dogs," she said.

Dogged determination

A lifelong dog lover and owner, Munger Kahn got her first dog at the age of 7. "That was because I just was lobbying my parents," she recalled. "I wanted a dog so badly."

Her adult advocacy for greater access for dogs on Long Island — both on- and off-leash — began at Coindre Hall, a Suffolk County park in Huntington, where park rangers frequently fined dog owners who let their dogs run free.

"Being denied access to public parks was just not right," Munger Kahn said. "Here we were, paying taxes and getting tickets and being yelled at by people in authority for taking our dogs to have fun, and to run and to get the exercise they needed."

Twenty years ago Munger Kahn joined the Huntington Dog Owners Group, which was founded in 1998 by local dog owners to address the canine prohibitions at Coindre Hall, and changed the name to LI-DOG a few years later to reflect its broader geographic scope.

"There was one little dog park in West Hills County Park — that was about a third of an acre out of about 43,000 acres of Suffolk County parkland — and it was totally overrun," Munger Kahn explained.

A backyard, she said, is not sufficient for a canine’s well-being.

"Human beings can’t give dogs adequate exercise. Socializing dogs, both with other dogs and other people, is very important," Munger Kahn said.

Countering a common reason for excluding dogs, she said most dog owners pick up after their dogs, and they shouldn’t be penalized for the few who don’t.

"There are people who vandalize our parks. And they don’t just close the parks to everybody because there’s a minority of people who do that," she reasoned.

A pack of dog parks

With off-leash access to Coindre Hall in limbo, Munger Kahn and her peers began approaching elected officials to create dog parks elsewhere in Suffolk County in 2005.

Their efforts paid off with a large dog park — for large dogs — in West Hills Park in Huntington in 2006, followed the next year by another in Smithtown’s Blydenburgh Park.

A key to their success has been choosing locales that don’t attract opposition from the community.

"We’ve looked for areas, fields that are away from people’s homes," Munger Kahn said.

Their movement gained real momentum after a meeting with Assemb. Steve Stern (D-Dix Hills), then a Suffolk County legislator, who would go on to introduce a bill to designate five county parks where dog runs could be created. The legislation passed unanimously in May 2007.

"That really got the ball rolling, as far as creating dog parks in Suffolk County," Munger Kahn said.

When he was approached by Munger Kahn, Stern recalled that he’d just returned from a trip visiting friends in San Francisco. There, he’d spent a day in a park where more than half of the park goers had brought their canine companions.

"I was really struck with what a wonderful day families were spending together with their dogs and how they were enjoying such a wonderful quality of life," Stern said, adding that he’d gleaned from a number of dog owners he spoke with that day, that people only brought their well-behaved dogs. "There’s an understanding that good dogs are welcome. Those that might be problems don’t come," Stern explained.

To emulate models set by successful legislation in other parts of the country, Stern and Munger Kahn worked together to draft language to establish the first off-leash dog parks in the county.

Today, there are eight off-leash dog runs in Suffolk County parks.

Huntington holdout

Until 2012, dogs were not permitted on trails or in parks in the Town of Huntington. In response to series of crimes in Frazer Park in Greenlawn, a pilot program to make the park safer with on-leash dogs was established in May of that year. Capitalizing on that program’s success, LI-DOG worked the next year with the Huntington Greenway Trails Committee, which promotes greater use of the town’s parks, to add four dog-friendly trails in the town; by 2017, Huntington had opened virtually all town parks to dog walking, except for the busiest one, Heckscher Park.

After an online petition garnered 2,600 signatures in support, Munger Kahn and LI-DOG started a park ambassador’s group to educate the public and lobbied Huntington Town Councilmember Joan Cergol to sponsor a pilot program in January 2020 to allow on-leash dogs in the park. The program was signed into permanent town law in November.

Heckscher Park has been a godsend for Wendy Tullo, who finds it safer to walk McCloud, her blue-eyed Siberian husky, there than on the busy streets of Huntington.

A marketing executive who has also served as a park ambassador, Tullo, 50, of Huntington, credits dogs in parks with bringing people together, too. "The temperature is so high, not just in this country, but locally," she said. "What I found is that dogs lower the temperature."

Added Tullo, "You get to know your neighbors better in an environment that’s inclusive and friendly, and just a nice community."

Into Nassau County

In response to requests from dog owners in Nassau County, LI-DOG formed a committee in 2009 to address greater canine access throughout that county, where there were only five dog runs at the time.

"2012 was a really big year for us. Nassau County opened Eisenhower Dog Park, Oyster Bay opened the dog park at Massapequa, and the village of Valley Stream opened a dog run," Munger Kahn said, adding, "These efforts take a long time. Government moves slowly, and it takes time to show support for these projects."

Her organization is striving to replicate Suffolk County’s policy, where on-leash dogs are permitted in every park, for its neighbor to the west.

"We feel that access to parks is really a basic need for people, whether they have a dog or not," Munger Kahn said.

"We could certainly use more access to on-leash walking in various parks," concurred Peggy Heijmen, of Oyster Bay, a vice president of LI-DOG. "I would love to have access to beaches in Oyster Bay."

In the entire Town of Oyster Bay, there are just two small dog parks, from the north to the south shores, noted Heijmen, 60, a church parish administrator.

"I think the towns are always leery to get involved. It’s tough. It’s an uphill battle everywhere," Heijmen said, noting that municipal laws banning dogs from public spaces are anachronistic and fail to recognize that dogs are now an essential part of everyday life.

For his part, Oyster Bay Supervisor Joseph Saladino noted that in the past two years, the town opened the first-ever dog park on the North Shore, at Centre Island Beach in Bayville, and designated a dozen neighborhood parks in various communities where residents can bring their leashed pets.

"These initiatives have enhanced pet owners’ access to town facilities, and we will continue to look for more opportunities. Our pets are like family, and these facilities provide a great community setting where residents and their pets can gather and socialize," said Saladino.

Chris Laubis, another LI-DOG vice president, who helped establish the dog park in Eisenhower Park and four on-leash parks in Nassau, including Massapequa Preserve, noted that dog ownership has surged in recent years.

"Not only dog ownership, but the way people feel about their dogs: they’re our four-legged kids in a sense," said Laubis, 56, an attorney who lives in East Meadow.

Battle for beaches

Next up on LI-DOG’s "to dog" list is beach access: Mud Creek County Park in Patchogue is the only beach where dogs can roam off-leash on Long Island.

The group will use its tried and true tactics: researching more remote beaches, such as the North Shore of Jones Beach and access to Fire Island from Robert Moses State Park, starting online petitions and enlisting elected officials to support their cause.

Though the COVID-19 pandemic has put a hold on LI-DOG’s beach campaign in 2020, it brought more and more people out to enjoy the Island’s natural resources.

"This year has really driven home our belief that access to public parkland is a basic right and need, whether you own a dog or not," Munger Kahn said. "And it’s not right for some officials to block off hundreds of acres of public parks and beaches to people with dogs."

Ironically, Coindre Hall, the park where it all began, still prohibits off-leash pooches.

"There has been resistance in the past from people who live near the park," Munger Kahn said.

Still, she and her peers at LI-DOG have come a long way since their nascent efforts, when elected officials were demonstrably resistant.

"At one [Suffolk County] legislative hearing where one of the elected officials who was sponsoring legislation to create a dog park, some of his colleagues were barking at him in mockery," Munger Kahn said.

Despite their boisterous high jinks that day, the legislators came through in the end: The bill passed 17-0.