It’s 6 a.m. on a Thursday, and Fergus, a young pit-bull-lab-Staffordshire mix, is already energetically mauling a squeaky ball in a corner of the long off-leash dog area that slopes from Agnes to Carnarvon in downtown New Westminster.
“I just bought him two new balls last night, and that’s one of them,” says Frank Smith, Fergus’s owner cheerily.
A cat person, it seemed like insanity to me to approach a stranger at the crack of dawn for an interview, but, like everyone I meet at the dog park this morning, Smith is surprisingly sociable.
“Everybody gets along except some dogs are a little more ‘Grrr!’ but other than that they’re all good,” he says after we’re greeted by another man who’s just arrived with a Shi Zhu-Jack Russell cross.
Smith, who works in the film industry, is waiting to drop Fergus off at Zoomies, one of several doggy daycares in the area.
A steady stream of canines in all shapes and sizes suggests the towers around the off-leash area are chock-full of dogs.
I wonder if they always get along with their dogless neighbours – especially at this time of day.
“People in the building here don’t like the noise sometimes,” Smith says, pointing to a tower right next to the park.
He says he’s seen people yell at dog owners from their balconies, but those occasions are rare from what I can tell from others I meet at the park.
“Usually we’re here at pretty appropriate times,” says Marla Nolan, who has stopped by to give Ruffles, her Shi Zhu cross a quick run.
Besides the regular demands of dog ownership (early mornings, constant walking, extra expenses) owning a dog downtown comes with its own challenges.
Without backyards to run in, for example, some downtown dogs don’t get enough exercise, according to Kam Brar, a vet who’s practised at Columbia Square Animal Hospital for six years.
“We see many overweight pets,” he says.
The problem is sometimes exacerbated by handy “pee beds” that allow dogs to do their business indoors without going out for a walk, he says.
But apartment living is a challenge for owners too.
“It can be hard, especially if (your dog) gets up in the middle of the night. You have to take them eight storeys down for a poo or a pee,” says Veronica Bryan, a high school teacher who has come up from the Quay with Brunswick, her 90-pound boxer.
A lack of greenspace in the downtown core is also a challenge, especially for some dogs I encounter who’d rather hold it than go at the downtown dog relief station – a parking-stall-sized swath of artificial turf on Columbia and Begbie.
The rewards of having a pooch, however, are more than worth it, according to the owners I meet.
“I can’t imagine my life without a dog,” Bryan says. “It’s just the best. I don’t have children, but it must be like having children; it’s not all about you any more, right?”
“Dogs make you better at being human, as far as I’m concerned,” says Kameron Borsuk, who manages a gym near the off-leash area and has brought Xochitl, his Mexican hairless, down before work.
And having a canine companion is what got downtown resident Michael Pip through a traumatic breakup recently.
“If I hadn’t had her, I don’t know what I would’ve done,” he says of his black poodle, Pippi.
The most common refrain amongst downtown dog owners, though, is that owning a dog has helped them make ties in the community.
Thompson, an Irish terrier who relieves himself regularly at the dog parklet on Columbia Street, is greeted by name by the owner of the flower shop nearby, says owner Russ Riach.
Susan Basso, whose black lab Lucy eschews the use of the relief station on its stinkier days, says she has started dog-walking with other owners she used to come across during her daily routine.
“We go walking together now because we got to know each other,” Basso says.
Back at the off-leash park, other dog-owners tell a similar tale.
“You meet a lot of people through your dog,” Bryan says.
“It’s nice because they’re social, so they get you out and about, so you do more activities,” Dave Howard, the owner of a dachshund-pug mix named Bo, says about owning a dog.
Howard says he meets up daily with a group of other owners at about 5 p.m. in the off-leash area.
One hub of the downtown dog community, I find out, is Charlie’s Petspa, a nearby doggy daycare and dog-grooming service that’s been in business for more than seven years.
“The owner there’s super nice,” says Nolan of proprietor Kasia Cobb. “My dog loves her.”
It’s a common refrain.
The business on Carnarvon is named after Cobb’s Shi Zhu-Maltese cross Charlie.
Over the last seven years, she’s says she’s seen many more businesses like hers pop up in New West, but there’s plenty of business to go around.
A downtown resident herself, Cobb is pregnant and expecting July 16, so her partner Lowell Kingston has taken on the heavy lifting.
He arrives at the off-leash park with a fistful of leashes attached to a pack of assorted canines.
Charlie’s cares for 18 to 25 dogs daily.
When they see Kingston at the park, the owners of two clients – a beagle and a golden-doodle – stop by and drop them off there instead of the business nearby.
“The dog park is such a great thing to have in this area,” Cobb says. “Everybody in the community meets there. We all get along and we all chit chat and talk about our dogs. We have play dates in the park.”
But she and other downtown dog owners are worried about a big chunk of the park being lost because of a new tower planned on the site.
Cobb is also worried about what she calls an “epidemic” of non-pet-friendly buildings going up as well as the increasing unaffordability of rental housing for pet owners, who are expected to pay a lot of money up front for pet deposit.
Despite all that, though, she says New West is a great place to own a pooch, and dogs and their owners have created a real sense of community in the downtown core.
“It’s a close-knit community,” Cobb says, “and it didn’t take a big building or structure to be put up for that to happen. It just sort of happened naturally.”
