As pooches romp around a dog park in Massapequa, they can thank the Town of Oyster Bay and a local dog owners group for throwing them a bone.
LI DOG, the Long Island Dog Owners Group, a not-for-profit organization, advocates for the island’s four-legged friends and were instrumental in the realization of the 5.2 acre wooded parcel bordered by Clocks Boulevard, East Pine Street and County Line Road. With two sections, one for big dogs and one for smaller dogs, the park is a blessing to many pooch parents.
“The park makes the neighborhood much more dog friendly,” said Marlene Decker, whose chihuahua Nacho does less romping and more gentle frolicking in the park. “It’s a beautiful place.”
LI DOG champions the cause of the canine in Nassau and Suffolk counties, and it’s mission is to get the island’s four-legged friends the rights their passionate owners believe are owned to them.
At a recent meeting at the Plainview-Old Bethpage Library, Ron Richichi of Westbury has been a member of LI DOG for about a year, and said that he first joined the group when he heard that they were starting an initiative to open a dog park in East Meadow’s Eisenhower Park, which he noted was a stone’s throw from his house. Since that successful effort, he’s taken on a role as one of the group’s co-organizers.
“I’ve been a dog owned for at least 40 or 50 years…I’ve always had a dog or two,” he said. “I plan and set up LI DOG’s pack walks, which is just a gathering of the members of the groups with this dogs for a big mass walking. It’s way to socialize with the dogs and each other. We do it once a month, and we’ve held them in places such as Old Westbury Gardens, Sagamore Hill, and Huntington, which recently opened up four of its parks to dogs due to the efforts of our group.”
The group meets monthly at various community centers throughout Nassau and Suffolk County, including the Plainview library, to update members on progress, plan fundraisers, and most importantly, talk about their shared experiences as dog owners.
LI DOG Board member Peggy Heijmen of Oyster Bay said that, as a whole, Long Island is a very unfriendly environment to own a dog in terms of outdoor areas that they are allowed to access. This holds especially true compared to other areas of the nation and even New York State, she said, where dog parks and on-leash access are far more common.
“We’ve been around since 1998…the group was started by two women named Barbara and Ginny, two Long Island dog owners who realized that there was nowhere to bring their dogs,” she said. “I found this out myself when I first adopted a dog about five years ago…I thought I could bring my dog to any park to go for a walk, but I was wrong. Most parks didn’t allow dogs, and LI DOG had to change the way that the governments of Long Island think about dogs and where they can go.”
Among the many things that LI DOG does to effect change, Heijmen said, is to petition local governments and politicians to allow dogs access to local parks and to construct dog-specific parks where the public can allow their four-legged friends time off of a leash in a safe, secure environment where they can exercise and meet other pooches to play with.
“We’re managed to get 10 dog parks opened since we started, and some of the most recent ones opened are in Selden and one that the Town of Oyster Bay opened in Massapequa, which is beautiful,” she said. “Before all of these parks, we had nothing here in Nassau County.
LI DOG co-vice president Christine Alubis of East Meadow agreed with the sentiment that there is strength in numbers when it comes to achieving any worthwhile cause that serves the greater good.
“Recently I submitted a petition with nearly 1,300 hand-signed names that I collected by going to PetCo, local parks, and so on,” she said.
In addition to persuading local municipalities to continue opening more dog parks, LI DOG is championing to have on-leash access allowed in parks and beaches that currently forbid any dog access whatsoever.
“If you have a dog that’s well exercised and socialized, there will be less people abandoning them at town shelters. Plus, owning a dog is a healthy lifestyle for people, as it gets you out into the fresh air as well,” she said.
To find out more about LI DOG, visit its website at www.lidog.org.
— With Additional Reporting by Steve Mosco
