Every morning I walk with my autistic teenage DD to the station, she gets on the train to school in one direction and I get on the train to work the opposite way.
Last bit of the walk cuts through a park, not really fully in it, past the car park, tennis courts and couple of gates out on to the very busy road.
This morning, we were just at the edge of the car park when a medium sized dog came racing over to us, jumped up at DD, jumped up at me, licked my hand. We had to stop walking, or could have kicked it, as it was bouncing round our legs.
Looked around and two people holding leads are chatting over by the tennis courts, so I called out ‘hey, you need to call this dog’. The owner did but dog did not respond, after a few tries they walked over but the dog was not having any of it still bouncing about/jumping up. Dog owner says ‘oh it’s a game now’. I said ‘you really need to have better recall’, and then again in a bit sharper/louder tone. I was getting a bit annoyed tbh as wanted to get to the station not at the last minute so DD could get on her train calmly.
Dog owner walked a bit to the side eventually and dog followed so we could walk on.
DD said I was being embarrassing but I feel it’s not unreasonable to expect a dog in a busy city park to have good recall and for people to keep more of an eye on an off lead dog near a busy road & car park.