Letters, August 16: Dog decision causes outrage

As the organising teacher of the Hillcrest Normal School annual cross-country, I am outraged we have not been allowed to use the hillside lawn at the Hamilton Gardens to run our event this year because of a complaint by a dog walker.

Last year we ran two events on the hillside lawn which is a designated dog exercise area. The first was our school cross-country with about 350 children running; the second was the Southeast Waikato Primary Schools cross-country which included nine schools and about 300 children.

While we were setting up one morning two dog walkers approached us. They voiced annoyance at us using the lawn as that was where they liked to exercise their dogs. I assume these people made a complaint. MORE>>

Yes, we are now the complaining society. Two people out walking their dogs in a dog park, wanting to finally let their dog off the lead because there's not alot of places to do this, then a bunch of kids start running through the dog park. Damn! Dogs back on the lead.