Small Agency Network

Good morning, 

We have had a request to purchase 4 or 5 air horns to place around our dog park due to multiple dog fights that have occurred over the past couple of weeks.  Fortunately, all of the dogs involved are okay and owners were amicable and shared information with each other if they needed to follow up for any reason. 

Has anyone had experience positive or negative with having air horns at a dog park?  There are two neighborhoods, plus a greenway that surround the dog park, so I wasn't sure how they would feel about it.  Having said that it sounds like this may only be needed 1-2 times a week perhaps. 

Would love to hear anyone's thoughts!

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Kelly Koernig CPRP
Director, Parks and Recreation Department
Town of Warrenton Parks and Recreation
Warrenton VA
(540) 349-2520
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I have never heard of this but we have been fortunate to have very few instances of fighting in the dog park. I would be interested to know if anyone else has an experience with this.

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Keith Cox CPRP, AFO
Director of Parks and Recreation
City of Bryant
Bryant AR
(501) 943-0429
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Hi Kelly,

Since we help manage municipal and private dog parks, this caught my eye.  None of our clients use horns or noise on a regular basis.  I was curious about research and the most recent study I found was "The Dog Soundscape: Recurrence, Emotional Impact, Acoustics, and Implications for Dog Observations and Dog–Human Interactions" (France, 2024) which suggested they would be "a major stress trigger and at a dog park, where arousal is already elevated, a sudden blast can amplify panic responses."

FYI, the BarkPass platform helps manage incidents with our "Troublemaker Tracking" module.  We all know that incidents create drama and a dog bite can end up costing you big bucks.  Troublemaker Tracking was built to help mitigate risk, flag and document problematic pets and owners, identify patterns, etc.

https://www.barkpass.com/dog-parks

Let me know if I can be of service.

-Brian

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Brian Hatfield
Partner
BarkPass
Phoenix AZ
(602) 844-7284
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