Dog Parks: Social Paradise or Public Health Hazard?

Dog parks are often promoted as the perfect place for dogs to exercise, socialize, travel, explore, and burn off energy—but are they really as beneficial or as safe as many dog owners believe?

In Episode 5 of Controversial Animal Topics, Dr. Turnera Croom takes an honest look at the risks and realities of dog parks, including unpredictable dog behavior, poor supervision, dog fights, bullying, injuries, disease and parasite exposure, vaccination concerns, licensing requirements, and the common misconception that every dog needs to socialize freely with unfamiliar dogs.

This episode also marks the debut of Dr. Croom’s dynamic new co-host, Imani Grant Jenkins—her executive assistant, daughter, and very first veterinary assistant from the early days of Dr. Croom’s home-visit practice. Imani grew up immersed in animal care, veterinary medicine, and animal welfare, and she brings her own knowledge, instincts, experience, and deep love for animals to the conversation.

Together, Dr. Croom and Imani discuss which dogs may benefit from dog parks, which dogs may be better off staying away, what responsible pet parents should watch for, and safer alternatives for exercise, enrichment, travel, and socialization.

They also tackle the uncomfortable side of dog park culture: owners who ignore posted rules, bring unvaccinated or unlicensed dogs, overlook aggressive behavior, or assume that everyone else should accept the risk.

Dog parks are not automatically bad—but they are not automatically safe, either. Before you open that gate, make sure you understand what your dog may be walking into.

Stay curious. Stay engaged. And always keep questioning—even me.

Topics include: dog parks, dog socialization, canine behavior, dog aggression, dog fights, pet travel, dog enrichment, dog safety, animal welfare, vaccines, licensing, parasites, responsible dog ownership, and veterinary advice.

💌 Stay connected with Dr. Croom:
 👉 Vet Truths Substack: https://bit.ly/VetTruthsSubstackWelcome

👉 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrCroomArmyVet

✨ “True holistic care brings comfort to pets—and peace to the humans who love them.” — Dr. Turnera Croom, Army Vet

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome back to Controversial Animal Topics. I'm Dr. Tanara Kroom, holistic vet, retired Army major, and the veterinarian parents come to for the real unfiltered truth. Today, we're talking dog parks and not just disease. We're talking behavior, safety, collective responsibility, and the culture that's grown up around these spaces that almost nobody is questioning. Now, I want to take a moment before we get into it because something is changing about this show starting today. I've been having these conversations mostly solo, and I've realized what's missing is a real thought partner in the room, someone who's inside this world with me, who asked the question a listener would actually ask, who isn't afraid to push back. So I'm bringing in Irmani Jenkins as a permanent co-host. She is my daughter, but she also was the very first veterinary assistant for Dr. Crew Mobile Veterinary Service. She also currently runs the pre-veterinary intern program at my practice, which means she is managing the next generation of veterinary professionals on a daily basis. Amani, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Thank you. And I want to say this topic really felt like the right one to start with because dog parks are one of those things everybody just accepts as good. Nobody really questions them. And working with the pre-vet interns, hearing what they're learning, seeing what the pet parents are asking about in the community. I just kept thinking we need to actually talk about this out loud with actual information behind it. Exactly. We need the real information. So let's get into it. I want to walk through a scenario with you. Something I've seen come through the practice enough times that it's a pattern. We have a full-time RV family. They're traveling the Michigan Lower Peninsula, they're going to Traverse City, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, wherever they land. They have two young kids and a five-year-old Golden Lab mix named Biscuit. Every new city they pull into, the first thing they do is find a dog park. That's how the family decompresses. It's how the kids burn their energy. It's how Biscuit gets to just be a dog. And honestly, it's how they meet people in a life where everything changes every few weeks. The dog park is one thing that stays the same. It's genuinely a good life. I want to name that before anything else. There's real beauty in what that family has built. Biscuit is their constant, the parks are their community. The kids love watching him run around. But here's the other part. This family leans holistic, which I respect honestly. They did everything right when Biscuit was a puppy. They gave him his full vaccine series. They followed that schedule to a T down to the day. But once he was past that first year and seemed healthy and happy, they kind of let it slide. They didn't get any boosters, they didn't check for worms. There's no more dewormers. And they also didn't have a VAT relationship for a few years. So, from what you see in practice, what does that risk profile actually look like?

SPEAKER_02 3:36

First, I want to acknowledge what they got right. The skepticism about over-vaccination is not unfounded. I have said publicly that the pharmaceutical industry does have real influence in veterinary medicine, and annual schedules don't always serve the animal. They sometimes serve the system. So that skepticism is actually why people find this show. But there is a meaningful difference between thoughtful skepticism and a gap in protection. And this family has a gap. Multiple parks per week, communal water sources, different environments constantly, kids in the household. That is a specific and compounding exposure profile. And Biscuit has nothing current to meet it with. That's not a philosophical position. That's a clinical one. What compounding means here is that each new park isn't a fresh start, it's an addition. The risk isn't one visit, it's the accumulation of every water bowl, every patch of soil, every dog he's run with across the entire lower peninsula. None of it filtered through any current protection. That's what we're actually looking at.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

So I actually did some research on this because I wanted to understand what we're really talking about. Not in general, but specifically, like what's actually there. So I looked up and I found a 2025 study in PLOS neglected tropical diseases that looked at round worm contamination across dog parks. Toxicara cannis eggs. And they found them at roughly 21% of sites. The highest concentration wasn't in the middle of the park, it was at the entrances. The first few feet that every dog and every person walks through, every visit, every park.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

And I want to add something I pulled separately in a different journal because I think it's important that the data isn't just coming from one place. There's a University of Calgary study on dog park fecal samples that found intestinal parasites in roughly half the samples collected. And these are not organisms that just stay on the dog. Let me explain the transmission path because it's simpler than people expect, and that's what makes it so easy to miss. Biscuit is nose down the whole time at the park. We know that because that's what dogs do. He sniffs and then he licks his nose. That's it. That's the route. He has now potentially ingested Toxicara eggs. Those eggs hatch. Larvae migrate, not just through the gut, but through tissue. And the disease we're talking about in humans is called visceral larval migrants. Larvae migrating to organs, the eyes, the liver, and in serious cases, neurological involvement. And children under 10 are the highest risk group because they play in the dirt, they touch the ground, and they put their hands in their mouths.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

And that made me really think about this as someone who has also worked in child care because the family in this scenario, they have a six-year-old. Of course. She had two stomach illness episodes this year with GI upset and fatigue. The family just chalked it up to a school lunch. How would they even know if it was connected to biscuit and the dog parks? They wouldn't.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

And that's exactly the problem, Imani. Giardia is shed in dog feces. It survives in soil and water. It's present in dog park environments at measurable rates. And in a healthy six-year-old, it presents as exactly that: cramping, loose stools, fatigue, the kind of thing every parent typically calls a stomach bug and moves on. The only way to know is to test. So that means their pediatrician who knows about the dog, knows about the parks, and about the frequency of contact. Most families never make that connection because nobody tells them to. The dog looks fine, the kid gets better, and the link never gets made.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

I want to move to something that actually stopped me when I looked it up because I think most people hear leptospirosis or lepto and think it's a rural thing, something that happens to hunting dogs or farm dogs, not a family's lab mix at a city dog park. So the Michigan MDART, our State Department of Agricultural and Rural Development, reported 54 leptospirosis cases in Michigan dogs in 2024. Of those 54 dogs, only five were vaccinated. 17 of them died or were euthanized. 17 dogs in one year in our state. When I saw that number, I had to sit with it for a second because that's not just a number. Those are families who brought their dog to a park and lost them to something that was completely preventable.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

And what I want people to understand is that in 2026, this isn't staying contained to Michigan. We're seeing active leptospirosis cases activity across multiple California counties this year, including at least one confirmed human infection. Public health officials are documenting that the bacteria survives in standing water for up to 30 days. This is not a swamp problem or a rural problem. This is a shared water problem. And here's the part that most dog park regulars have never thought about. Those communal water stations at dog parks, they typically sit outside overnight, around the clock, in many cases. Raccoons are drawn to water sources. It's instinct, not incidence. They urinate near the water, and leptospirosis bacteria shed in that urine can survive in that standing water for up to a month. So that bowl that biscuit drinks from at every park, every single park across the lower peninsula, wildlife had access to it between visits. That's not a hypothetical exposure pathway.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

That's a documented one. I want to ask the question that I hear from pet parents, and honestly, some of the pre-vet interns too, because I think it's a legitimate one, and I'd rather it be asked out loud. How much of what we just described is genuine risk? And how much of it is the veterinary industry amplifying fear to move products?

SPEAKER_02 10:41

Ah, well, Amani, that is a fair question. And I'm gonna answer it honestly, not defensively for all me and my veterinary colleagues. There is a pharmaceutical influence in veterinary medicine. I have said that publicly and I will keep saying it. Annual schedules are sometimes designed around revenue, not risk. Blanket recommendations that do not account for a specific dog's lifestyle exist and they are a problem. So that skepticism is warranted. But here's the distinction. When our state agency reports 17 dogs dead from a preventable bacterial infection in one year, that's not a pharmaceutical press release. That is public health data. That is the line between manufactured fear and appropriate targeted prevention. And I want people to be able to find that line because it's real and it matters.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

So I want to shift to something that I don't think gets talked about enough alongside the disease stuff. But shut, because in my experience at the practice and hearing from pet parents, the behavior issues at dog parks are just as common and just as ignored. What I hear consistently and what I've actually seen is owners who drop their dogs inside a fence park and then they go and sit in their car, or they stand at their gate scrolling on TikTok the whole time, or they bring a 90-pound dog into a section with a 12-pound dog, and they don't seem to see an issue with it until something actually happens. The owners are not watching their dogs, and that's one of the most common things I hear about. And it's not just one person doing it, it's a pattern. It's become normal in dog park culture in a way that most people who go regularly have just stopped noticing, I think.

SPEAKER_02 12:36

Well, you know, there was a report in February of 2026, a piece that quoted a canine behavior trainer, and that quote stuck with me. It goes like this traditional dog parks are essentially unregulated. Conflict is often a matter of when, not if, because so few owners are actually watching their dogs. And the physics of size mismatches alone should be enough to make people pause. A large dog playing with a small dog, even friendly play, can go wrong in an instant. I have seen dogs die in dog parks, not from an attack, but from play. A dog jumps, lands wrong, and a small dog doesn't get up. The owner was 20 feet away not paying attention.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

So, how does this connect back to what we were talking about before? The disease risk, the vaccination gap. Because I want to understand how it all fits together.

SPEAKER_02 13:41

Well, an unattended dog and an unvaccinated dog are the same problem at their root. Someone entered a shared space and did not accept the responsibilities that come with it. And here's why that matters beyond the individual dog. Parvovirus, for example, it's contagious before it's visible. A dog can be shedding parvo actively, showing no symptoms yet, running the park, using the water bowl, interacting with every dog there. That's how Michigan's northern outbreak spread. Not through sick-looking dogs, through dogs that looked completely fine. One dog's exposure becomes everyone's exposure. That's not a scare tactic. That's how infectious disease moves in communal environments.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

And I think the hard truth in that, and this is what's been hitting me as we talk through this, is that the pet parents who are doing everything right, who vaccinated, who do the fecal checks, who watch their dogs the whole time, they're still carrying risks that belong to someone else. That's what collective responsibility actually means. It's not just something you hear about, it lands on the actual dogs and actual families.

SPEAKER_02 15:09

Well, I don't want to leave anyone with a list of problems and no path forward. You know, we've talked about a lot of issues here. So let me be specific about what I would actually recommend for a dog like biscuit. Not a blanket annual protocol, but something calibrated to his actual life. I'm a holistic veterinarian. I'm not here to hand anyone a 15-item schedule and a bill. But proportionate doesn't mean optional. And what's proportionate to this risk profile is this core vaccines, rabies. It's the law and it's the right call. Parvo and distemper, non-negotiable for a dog in communal spaces this frequently. And leptospirosis, specifically, given that documented Michigan exposure data we just talked about and the standing water transmission route we just walked through. Next, fecal testing before any dewormer. I don't believe in blanket chemical deworming without knowing what you're actually dealing with. Run a fecal panel first, get baseline data, then build a protocol from what's actually there. Stop using the communal water bowls. Bring your own. We see a lot of those on even Timu these days, a little flip, and you can pour the water that you bring in for your dog. Bring it to every park, every visit. This costs nothing except the habit, and it removes one of the most consistent exposure points in Biscuit's whole routine. And if there are children in the household, talk to the pediatrician about any unexplained GI episodes. Tell them about the dog. Tell them about the parks. And ask specifically about parasite testing. That connection almost never gets made because nobody tells pet parents to make it. And here in the United States specifically, it's something that we could definitely improve on.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

I want to ask about titer testing because this comes up constantly, and I want to make sure we address it directly. Because I know a lot of pet parents wonder about this. A lot of people who are already hesitant about annual revaccination ask about titers. The idea that you can test whether immunity from a previous vaccine is still active rather than just vaccinating again automatically. Is that something that actually works? Or does it sound better than it actually is? It's real.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

For Parvo and Distemper and an adult dog who had a proper puppy series, yes, run a titer first. If protective antibody levels are still adequate, you don't revaccinate. That's a legitimate holistic approach, and it's something I use and support in my practice. Where it gets more complicated, lepto immunity from vaccination is genuinely shorter lived than parvo or distemper. And with active documented transmission in Michigan right now, a tighter test result that says probably fine isn't sufficient protection. So lepto needs current coverage. Full stop. Rabies is a legal issue in addition to a medical one. Tighter interpretation for legal compliance varies by state. In Michigan, a current vaccination is what holds up if something happens. So rabies stays on the vaccine side. But the broader point stands: titer testing before automatic re-vaccination is a reasonable, evidence-supported approach for the right diseases. What I want is current data on this dog. Right now, there is none. Whether that data comes from a titer or a vaccine is a conversation worth having. But the conversation requires showing up first.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

The thing that I keep coming back to from everything we've talked about today is the water bowl. That's the one that's really sitting with me because it's so simple. It's something you could literally change today before the next park visit. And I had never really thought through what could be accessing these bowls overnight. That one is staying with me.

SPEAKER_02 19:42

Before we close out, I want to bring in a voice from inside the practice. One of my pre-veterinary interns. Her name is Zulin Chin. We know her as Minnie. She researched this topic as part of our weekly intern assignment on dog park environments. She addressed something that comes up in almost every client conversation about dog parks. And she framed it in a way that's worth sharing. Minnie is a pre-veterinary student in my virtual telehealth internship program. Here she is.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

Hi everyone, my name is Su Len Chen. If a client asks whether their dog is ready for the dog park, I will look at several criteria. First, I will see if the dog is fully vaccinated and on parasite prevention. Then, I will see if they show relaxed body language around unfamiliar dogs. Lastly, if they can play without bullying, freezing, hiding, guarding toys, or escalating quickly. After researching this topic, I believe veterinarians should be more selective rather than automatically recommending dog parks. Some dogs can benefit from them, but others may do better with structured walks, small play groups, or training classes.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

What's useful about what many laid out is that it moves the conversation from general risk to individual readiness. And those are two different questions. Vaccination and parasite prevention as a baseline, yes. But then behavior under pressure, body language, how the dog regulates in an unpredictable space, those are things you can actually observe before you ever open that gate. It's a solid starting framework. And it's the kind of thinking that our virtual telehealth internship program is designed to develop.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

And I think what makes her criteria land for me is that they're observable. You don't need a lab result or a specialist consult to notice whether your dog is freezing at the gate or escalating in the first five minutes. Those are things you can see if you're paying attention, which loops us right back to the unattended owner conversation from earlier. Readiness isn't just about the dog.

SPEAKER_02 22:37

Let me bring it home. Dog parks are not the enemy. Shared spaces require shared responsibility. Know your dog's specific risk profile, not the generic one, yours. Build your protocol around that profile and bring your own water bowl.

SPEAKER_01 23:00

And if you have a six-year-old who's had a couple stomach bugs this year and a dog who goes to the park three times a week, just make the call to the pediatrician. Tell them about the dog. That's a five-minute conversation that I think most people have never had.

SPEAKER_02 23:27

Not to scare them, but to give them what they need to make a real decision. This show, Controversial Animal Topics, exists for anyone who cares about living beings and the world we share with them. That's bigger than pet ownership. That's about how we show up in shared spaces with other animals, with other people's children, with other families who are trusting that everyone around them is taking this seriously. Follow the show wherever you listen. Find me on Substack at drumarmyvet.substack.com. That's where the deep dives live. And if today's conversation made you want to actually look at your dog's care, not a cookie cutter protocol, something built around your dog's actual life, that's what I do. The link is in the show notes. I'm Dr. Tenera Kroom. This is Controversial Animal Topics. Stay curious, stay honest, and take care of your animals.