Dog park heartache

Yesterday, we learned that our favorite dog park was closed. We're not sure when it closed, but we know it was basically a surprise. The dog park is not public land, it is land that belongs to a church. The board of trustees did a pretty much complete turnover recently, and in checking up on various bits of church business, learned that the church had no liability coverage in the event someone got hurt by a dog on the church property, and decided to sue everyone within 5 zip codes for their medical bills and pain and suffering.

There was a meeting this morning where the church facilities manager and a couple of other representatives talked to about 30 of us dog people. One dog person is sponsoring an e-mail list for us so that we can make contacts and find ways to help the church accommodate us while still keeping the church's risk low.

So far, the only thing the church people know for sure is: Their insurance agent is not sure whether the church can get coverage for a public-access dog park on its property, and if the coverage is available it will cost "thousands and thousands of dollars." They are very reluctant to head into the areas of charging membership fees and providing either dog-collar tags or passcards for some kind of electronic gate locks, two of the alternatives mentioned so far, because the facilities manager is concerned that there is no way to prevent someone without the membership from bringing a dog and causing trouble.

At this point we are only in the beginning of investigation into solutions. Hopefully, we can come up with some good thing soon!