About dogs on beach

[benten54]

We live in a beachy holiday area in Australia. It's local to a big city and it's the kind of place where people come with their family for a long extended break in the summer holidays from the city. They either come to their family beach house or rent places.

I live here all year. In the summer there are rules about when dogs can be on the beach which is until 10am in the morning and then after 5pm. The rules are there so holidaymakers can enjoy the beach without dogs. That's all fine. All of us who live here respect that and the beach is dog free for 7 hours in the day. We all have to rearrange our day so we and our dogs are off the beach at 10am.

Over the past month virtually every day there has been several holidaying families who have arrived with tiny children or toddlers and set down their beach blanket well before 10am. For context the beach is 2k long and there would probably be 40 dogs and their owners getting their morning walk in. Running after balls and playing with each other

These dogs walk that beach every morning, winter, rain, storms yet everyday in the sunny weather there has been an altercation because dogs have been running around and 'scaring' their kids. Most of them go nowhere near or just have a sniff and wander off but today a mother kicked one of the dogs because she got close to her wandering toddler.

Every day some parent has had an issue with dogs running around near their kids and made a massive fuss about it. Today I threw a ball for my dog and a toddler suddenly threw himself into the path of her running. There was no contact, and my dog has no interest in other humans but both parents came flying up and screamed at me about 'too many fucking dogs on this beach, keep your dog on a lead when there's kids around'.

AIBU for shouting back 'dogs allowed before 10am, kids allowed after that, keep your children under control'? Surely if you don't want dogs around your kids, come after 10am!!

There's always one 🤣🤣

What I can't fathom is that bottles of water, wine, cans of beer, sodas aren't too heavy to carry to the beach but the empties are. Don't get me started on human excrement in the sand dunes complete with loo roll when we have loos at one end of the beach are acceptable

They were probably embarrassed about their piss poor parenting that led to a toddler almost getting into the sea because their parents aren’t capable of watching them, or teaching them not to run off. If they don’t want their child to run away they need to work on their parenting.

Tell me you haven't read the thread without actually telling me you haven't read the thread.... 🙄

@Flossflower What a odd question! If you think dogs are more important maybe they could operate and run the hospitals, produce and transport our food etc.

That's a bizarre metric to measure dogs against, but as you asked

Here's a dog working in a hospital, identifying samples which contain cancer
www.newscientist.com/article/mg22730280-300-the-cancer-sniffers-dogs-could-be-the-best-tool-for-diagnosis/

And here's a dog working on a children's ward (nothing new about that - I remember one visiting when I was a paediatric inpatient 20 years ago - highlight of a completely shit week)
eu.mycentraljersey.com/story/news/health/2023/01/12/childrens-specialized-hospital-welcomes-therapy-dog-maui/69782037007/

Border collies, or sheepdogs as they're often known, play a crucial role in rounding up and moving sheep, so are involved in food production.

Likewise livestock guardian dogs, which are also involved in producing food
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock_guardian_dog

Admin might be beyond them and I doubt the DVLA is going to start issuing HGV licences to dogs, but there are many working in both healthcare and food production.

This is exactly why l love the British winters, you can enjoy a lovely dog walk in peace, as the fairweatherd folks are all at home.

People here are so weird and I'm assuming on a wind up half the time. If a dog gets too close to my kid or me for a 'sniff' they're going to quickly get wet and bigger off

Bugger

This is me. My small dog absolutely hates big dogs running up to her. Also my kids (much older than toddlers!)love dogs but I'd be wary about big dogs that I didn't know running up to them. You might know that your dog just has a sniff but no one else does.

If I really wanted to take my dog for a beach walk in the summer I would go before 8 to hopefully avoid most people.

Yes it was bizarre but someone stupid asked why humans were more important than dogs!
Dogs and other animals can do many clever things all while guided by humans.

Humans are more important than dogs because humans say so. End of.

And because dogs depend on humans for food. Because humans put them in crates and on leads and force them to depend utterly on humans for everything including a few moments of freedom to run around on a beach.

I don't think you read the OP - dogs are allowed on the beach at certain times.

I would avoid the beach at those certain times.

However, I would expect dogs to be off the beach at 10.01am sharp.

(not that I even like beaches so it's academic for me!)

Pre-covid maybe.

Not a dog walker (obvs) but like to go out for a run in peaceful places but all these annoying people took up walking during covid and have carried on doing it. Very very slowly. Blocking paths. Walking their dog on an extendable lead. And if I'm really lucky, staring at their mobile phone as they go.

Grrrr.