I live in a lovely outer London borough with about ten parks within half an hour's walk, full of young families, great place to bring up children... except for the dogs.
My 2yo DS is TERRIFIED of dogs and, unfortunately, so am I. He's got it from me, I know, and it's just awful. I was so scared as a child I'd cry if I had to walk past a dog on the street and after years of work I got to the point where I felt I wasn't very comfortable around dogs but could live a normal life. However, seeing my DS being nervous around them has brought it all back and honestly now I come out in a cold sweat if I see a dog. I try to put a brave face on it for him, I really do, but he can tell I'm scared and we just wind each other up, I think.
So I find myself barely able to use any of the parks because every single one is full of dogs all the time. The one closest to our house, the fenced-off playground is right next to the entrance so we can do a sprint in and then it's OK. But one time several months ago, someone's dog got in (to their credit, they leapt in straight away and manhandled it out again) and he STILL talks about it and looks for dogs before he will play.
But the other ones, it's like a tiny little island of playground in the middle of acres and acres of dogs chasing each other, barking, etc. It's not even about whether their owners are responsible or not any more. If a dog so much as looks at DS, he freaks. And there are lots of owners who trot out the old "He's just being friendly!" while I hold a sobbing DS and try not to cry myself!
There is just no open space in the whole of our neighbourhood that doesn't have dogs in it. I'd love to be able to go for walks, take him out for a picnic, kick a ball around... But we can never relax because there's always a dog. Even if we weren't scared, we'd end up tripping over them or having one come over for a taste of our sandwiches.
I know IABU to be so scared of dogs. I do. But AIBU to wish there was one dog free park in this apparent suburban park paradise?