AITA?? Dog park interaction
A man was very rude to me and my husband at the dog park today…
For context: this is a very small park about the size of a very large backyard - it’s fully fenced with 1 entrance and exit it’s made for a great way for us to be able to let our 50 lb dog-reactive pitty husky mix play fetch and let off some steam. There is also another slightly smaller fully fenced dog park about 50 meters away that we use at times as well.
So today we show up and there is no one in there so we decide to throw the ball around for our girl for a bit. We had been in there for about 10 minutes when another owner shows up with his dog. I say to the man “oh our dog doesn’t like to play with other dogs she’s reactive please give me a second to collect her and we will go” and he says “well this is an off leash public area this park is not just for you and your dog” I reply saying “we realize that, we only come in here when there are no other dogs and we just offered to leave so you can use the park” he then says “it’s okay I’ll just go up there” (I assumed he meant the other dog park about 50m away) so I say “oh are you sure?? Thank you!” And throw the ball again for my dog” about 30 seconds goes by and he only moved about 10 m away and was just staring at us with his dog crying and barking leading to our dog barking. I say “sorry we can go?” And he says “well yea like I said before this park isn’t just for your dog” I reply saying “I’m sorry I thought you were meant you were heading up to the other park we are leaving” and he just goes “no this park is not just for you and my dog just wants to play”. We promptly grabbed our dog and left. I just don’t understand why he was so rude to us, I was very polite until the final comments. I felt it was quite obviously a miscommunication and the whole interaction was maybe 5 minutes.
We very much understand it’s a public space, we’ve been going to this park for months and have never had an issue other owners have been quite understanding! We don’t have sniffspot or rentable dog parks where we live and we are just trying our best to give our girl an enriching life while also being respectful to others. I feel some owners just don’t understand.