While I love living in Oak Bay, I am always baffled at the priorities that some members of Oak Bay council choose to champion. I think it was about two years ago that I brought a petition with 400 signatures to council asking for more lit fields for kids to play on during the winter.
Oak Bay is limited for lit playing fields. Council urged me to take it to Oak Bay Parks and Recreation, but to no avail.
Little did I know that if I had included the phrase “more lit fields for dogs” in my pet-ition I would probably have had more council support and needed 345 less signatures.
I am a dog owner, but I am tired of the dog owners who are putting their animals before humans. You know, the ones who bring their dogs into stores because they have a sense of entitlement.
The dog groups at Windsor Park and McNeill Bay do a great job at cleaning up dog excrement, but having coached soccer at Windsor and having played with my kids at Willows Beach, I am tired of scraping dog excrement out of my kids’ cleats and washing it from between their toes. It is not what dog waste is picked up, but what remains for the rest of us to walk, dig and crawl through for the remainder of the day on the beach.
While I am sure the Willows walkers are excellent at locating and removing their dog feces, not everyone is, as I have seen numerous times on the Monterey middle school field.
Willows Beach is a prime summer locale for families, but it needs to remain ‘human only’ during the summer months. I’m happy to find 400 more petitioners to sign to allow dogs to vote in the next municipal election. We are not far off at this rate.
Scott Piercy
Oak Bay