[...]DogFriendly.com’s 2009 Top 10 U.S. Cities to Visit With Your Dog « DogFriendly.com's Dog News[...]…

Thank you for valuable information that you write here. Ha I am sure this will be very useful as a guide for those who will now travel to bring their dogs.

Just one more bit of evidence that Kansas City is a reactionary, draconian place to live that treats dog people like second-class citizens.

I just would hate to see some poor person move to Kansas City because they think it’s dog-friendly because they’d be in for a rude surprise.

Kansas City has only one dog park, and the people who founded it had to fight for a decade or more to get the dog park. (There are a few other dog parks in the suburbs, run by other cities that understand that attracting people with dogs and being progressive is a good thing.) The existing dog park gets short shrift from the parks department and would be nothing but a swamp if not for a great group of volunteers. Our parks are totally empty, yet when people gather informally at parks to let their dogs run off-leash (because there are no dog parks in most neighborhoods) they are routinely ticketed and fined $150 or so. I don’t do this, but can’t blame people who do.

I was involved with efforts to get a second dog park in Kansas City, and the parks board treated us with open hostility and basically told us that they don’t care about anything unless it’s for children. (One particularly horrible and rude parks board member actually said the only thing she cares about is “little black children” and that there will “never be a dog park” on her watch.) We tried to meet with city council members to get support for a dog park and one Kansas City city council member told one of our members who met with him that he is “not a fan of dog parks” and that he thinks “loose dogs should be SHOT on sight.” Does THAT sound like a dog-friendly city to you when we have these types of people leading the city? People who openly tell dog-loving constituents they think dogs should be SHOT??? Sounds like something from some yeehaw out of the freaking Dukes of Hazzard, not from an elected leader of a large, modern American city.

What started out as a really optimistic effort to get a second dog park at an underused park in an area of the city with tons of dogs turned sour. The group worked on it for three years and was screwed over, mistreated and insulted at every turn by the parks board of Kansas City, which was appointed by the Kansas City mayor. The group, WOOF, was willing to raise funds and do everything for this new dog park, and even got a professional architect to volunteer his time to design a beautiful, eco-friendly park. The parks board even appointed a sham task force, then ignored all of their recommendations and quickly threw together their own “recommendations” including putting a dog park on top of a toxic dump that they were advised not to put anything else near until it was properly capped (which it hasn’t been.) That’s where they think dogs and dog people deserve to be – on a landfill. (Oh, and they won’t build that dog park either – since no one wants a park on a dump, there is no advocacy group to lead the charge.) Also, another parks board member said no dog park will ever be built in Kansas City unless there is 100 percent support from all the neighbors. Anyone who has tried to start a dog park knows what a joke that is.

In the meantime, this same parks department/parks board just built a brand new playground because there was something wrong with the surface of an existing playground (nothing wrong with the equipment, just the surface) so they built a whole new playground with all new equipment within a few months, even though there is another playground in the *same park* visible from the newly rebuilt playground, and though they supposedly have no money.

Well, Kansas City parks board, I’m glad you love children so much. Maybe you can pay for all of their tuition to private school when all the dog owners without kids who pay the taxes to send these urban children to school flee the city because you basically gave us the finger and told us we’re not welcome here. Goodbye, and enjoy your crumbling, crappy city!