Personally, I don't care for them. I've heard a lot of stories, and have dealt with dogs hitting their "terrible two's", really being a handful when their owners have used these parks as their dog's only form of exercise with no other form of "structured" socialization in the dog's daily routine up to that point. The comments about the transmission of illnesses from dog to dog is made even more worth listening to, with the new dog flu.
I just received word via a friend, that this flu has been diagnosed in a shelter in Portland. A few dogs have already died at this shelter. This information is unconfirmed by me personally, but I trust the source.
My preference if you want to socialize and exercise your dog, is to get together with a group of friends and their dogs. You can take walks with your dogs to practice leash manners and training, and then have some off leash time afterwords. This provides a certain amount of co-operation, supervision, and leadership on the part of the owners, instead of the "free-for-all" of the unsupervised dog park.
We have both a fenced park, and an off-leash area at one of the local beaches. The fenced park is like a "soap opera", since I live in a small community, and the off-leash beach area is like running a gauntlet of aggressive dogs. No thanks!
Unfortunately, I can see how some people don't have the option of a fenced yard or country living. For folks in the city, this may be their only local option for their dog to socialize and run around off-leash. I understand some well maintained parks are really great, so I guess some of it depends on the size of the park, how it is managed, and who shows up to "play".
I can definately see how one bad apple could ruin things pretty fast in an unsupervised park.
