Items needed for Animal Care & Control Shelter System in NYC. Totally problematic system in need of reform (see blog post below), but, if you have any of these items (blankets, cat litter, toys, cleaning supplies) and can help New York City’s animals, you can leave them there at the park.
Previous WSP Blog post: *How the New York City Shelter System – ACC, Animal Care & Control – system is ‘broken’; 13,000 animals killed in 2009
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Hi Cathryn,
A friend just told me about your blog, and as one of the three Board members for the Washington Square Park Dog Run Association (large run only–small run has its own management), I thought I should take a look. Re this post, we share your concerns regarding AC&C, which is why we are now donating all collected items to the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals instead. And FYI, regarding that post back in June about the horrific flooding in the run, neither Pat nor Becky is to blame. Pat & I both called Becky as soon as the flooding started, and Becky immediately requested the “sump pump” team (no, that is not their real name, you’d have to ask Becky for that) come out to solve the problem, but they had emergency calls to pump playgrounds and dog runs in parks across the city because of the heavy rains. They actually came out three times in two weeks, but the truth is that the drainage for our current dog run was never installed properly, so it floods in every rain. Of course all of this is old news by now. But if you want some fresher news, here’s a scoop: Parks’ line about making the new dog run 24 hours because we wanted it is completely untrue. Even worse is their claim that they have to have the entrance into the run be on the outer perimeter of the park in order to meet “our” demands for a 24 hour dog run. This is painfully ironic to us because we’ve never asked for a 24 hour dog run (we have enough problems finding needles in the run every morning without it being open 24 hours), and we fought to the bitter end not to have *any* entrance into the run from the parks’ perimeter, because every now and then a dog darts through someone’s legs as they enter or exit and gets out. Right now it isn’t much of a problem, because they end up in the middle of the park where they can be grabbed easily. But if there is an entrance directly onto the street, we are certain to have a number of dog fatalities. The truth is that Parks doesn’t want the big dogs inside WSP, and they think that if they make the entrance to the dog run on the outer perimeter of the park, it will cut down the number of dogs coming into the park.
Hi Jena,
Thanks so much for your illuminating comment. I appreciate your information on the flooding issue and the changes to the entrance location and 24 hour access. I was aware that pretty much no one with a dog wanted the location moved but, like everything else, the Parks Department and designer had to re-orient every last thing seemingly about the park. I will highlight your information however in an upcoming post to bring a bit more attention to this at least via people who read this blog. I agree about dogs getting out being a real concern. Now that the dog run is moved into Phase III, I just wonder if there’s any way to get some more attention placed on this as it seems the Parks Department is potentially having trouble paying for the job.
Thanks for checking out the blog and writing in! Please feel free to write at any time with your viewpoint and thoughts.
best,
Cathryn.