White house cools on

It’s an awesome sight. You’ve just fetched up beside a “dogs in parks” sign at the bottom of the path that leads down from the carpark. There’s the sound of frenzied yapping from a van that pulls in. As you watch from 50m away, the doors open and the dogs pour out. They race down the slope, thudding like galloping horses straight at you. If you were their quarry, you wouldn’t stand a chance. But you’re not. They don’t even notice you as they tear past, two big ones out front tailed by a game little one, with others further back. They stop another 30m or so further on, race back up the hill, and then back down again, a full motley pack of 10 of them by this time.

Eventually, they slow down, one of them gives you a friendly sniff. That leaves their carer picking up after them before they head further across the rolling parkland, revelling in this crisp weekday autumn morning.

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You can learn a lot about dogs at Day’s Park. The extreme pace of a pack in joyous flight, for instance.

Or that some huskies have differently coloured eyes. And a truly independent streak.

Mika, one brown eye, one blue, is demonstrating that on Saturday morning by scooting across the Hamilton park and disappearing into a neighbouring property despite the best efforts of owners Jess and Morgan Eades to call her back.

They’re sled dogs, Morgan remarks by way of explanation, as Jess goes to retrieve her.

“If you said ‘go this way’, a nice little german shepherd would see thin ice and go ‘well I don’t want to, you know, I might die if I go this way. But you told me to do it, so I’m going to do that.’”

Huskies are more independent.

“If you ask them to do something that they wouldn’t want to do, they go ‘well, nah, I’m not going to do that’. Every time you ask them to do something, they make that internal decision whether they’re going to listen to you or not.”

Like right now.

This off-leash park has a lot to distract a dog on Saturday morning, quite apart from what may be lurking in a neighbour’s property. The animals are absolutely everywhere, walking, sniffing, gambolling, fetching tennis balls. Especially sniffing. If scents were colours, the park would be glowing and strobing like a pulsing rainbow.

It is a place of unfettered delight for a dog. It’s big and it’s beautiful. Its rolling, tree-dotted contours, with River Road safely distant up a steep bank, and the river just a short walk down a concreted drive, could hardly be bettered.

And the dog walkers come from far afield. The Eadeses, for instance, are here from Karāpiro, while the friends they’re walking with are from Ngāruawāhia.

Morgan and Jess used to bring Mika here five days a week when they lived in Beerescourt. They shifted a few weeks ago, and aim to keep coming. “We know so many nice people out here that we try and still make an effort,” Morgan says.

This is “absolutely” the best place. The new one at Minogue Park is too small, and gets soggy when it’s wet, they say. Plus, on a hot day, long-furred Mika can cool off here by the tree-lined river.

It’s doubtful Morgan knew exactly what he was letting the couple in for when he introduced Mika as a puppy to Jess four years ago.

“I found her on Trade Me and I didn’t tell Jess what we were doing. We went and turned up at [the] house, and we put Mika in Jess’s hands and she couldn’t say no.”

Did she want to say no?

“No. This beautiful little face looking up at you,” she says. “How could you?”

The information says not to let them off the lead, Morgan says. They might have got lucky with Mika. “She’s very chill for a husky.”

Maybe it’s something to do with the owners. He’s had another chill dog in the past, a rescue rottweiler. “You could have robbed my house and he would have helped,” he says, belying the rottweiler breed’s fearsome reputation. “He was just an absolute lovable doofus.”

There are bound to be a few rottweilers here this morning, maybe some pitbulls. This place really does demonstrate it’s about the owner, not the breed, when it comes to dog aggression.

And hundreds of them will visit Day’s Park today, with February’s Saturday visitor average about 650, including non dog-owners. For the year ending February 2023, Day’s Park had an average 920 weekly visitor count. It comfortably outstrips other leash-free parks in Hamilton.

These dogs are among more than 600,000 in New Zealand, as the dog population growth rate outstrips that of humans.

You sense the buzz of Day’s Park as you get close. A young woman walks briskly home with her dog on its lead, while a family group with two dogs run from their cars across the road to the park. A man in the carpark towels down his dog before leaving. There are 10 spaces in the carpark proper and four more alongside. Most are occupied.

The atmosphere is happy and expectant, like a crowd arriving at a festival, while some are leaving having had their fill.

One of those is Vicky Redwood, heading back up from the river with Harley, a friendly jack russell cross with miniature pinscher and griffin.

They’ve come from Hamilton East this morning, in a ritual that brings them here both days of the weekend.

The two of them do laps of the park, and go down to the river. Today’s session has been about 40 minutes.

Harley, 3, is confident, and gets on well with dogs, Redwood says. “Zoomies” down by the river are always good; he’ll get other dogs to chase him, or chase them himself. And he’s not bothered about size. Big, small, they’re all potential playmates.

“He’s just happy cruising around, hanging out with the dogs.”

As if to demonstrate her point, Harley is going up to every passing dog. And he’s drooling big time. Day’s Park is the only place he does that. Redwood can only assume it’s because of all the smells.

Redwood, who has been bringing Harley here for two years, has got to know some of the regulars. “Everyone down here’s really friendly.”

What do they talk about?

“Oh, just dogs and our lives.” Mostly their dogs, though.

Darryl Eastwood is a newbie, here for just the second time with Roxy, a pitbull rhodesian ridgeback cross. It’s a misunderstanding to think those breeds are born to fight, he says. Saffron, his last dog, was a boxer, a breed which he says was trained to attack bulls back in Roman days. “So it’s not about the breed. It’s about the people that are looking after the breed.”

Roxy is Eastwood’s recovery dog because he has PTSD after a serious motor vehicle accident. Someone suggested keeping a dog as a companion, Roxy popped up as a rescue animal and Eastwood thought, could he afford to have her? “And then I sat down that night and thought, can I afford not to?”

As he talks, other dogs keep turning up, milling around, heedless of the humans, who risk tripping should they take a step in this seething mass. Roxy trots over to one. “Oh, they found each other again,” Eastwood calls to the other owner. “They like each other, don’t they?” she calls back before heading down to the river.

Eastwood will come here daily. “This place here is so open, and leash-free so the dogs learn to socialise. She’s only a 9-month-old puppy, and that’s what I wanted to do.”

He’s got her on a lead for now, partly because of how excited she gets. Sure enough, as soon as he unleashes her, Roxy scoots off down to the river.

Eastwood has some final words. “I want people to know it’s important that places like this don’t get closed down or anything. You know, you can’t keep your dog at home behind a fence 24/7. It’s like keeping an elephant chained up.

“Right, I’d better go and find her.”

Anahera Sheehy has two dogs with her at the park. “This is Buddy. And Sage over there is saying hello to everyone,” she says, striking a very Day’s Park note.

Buddy, wearing a Rasta-coloured collar, is her partner’s dog. He’s an old timer and has slowed down, but he starts running around when she puts his collar on him. And just before he’s getting fed. She laughs. “Food is his life.”

Sage, meanwhile, has a harness of no particular colour. Sheehy started bringing her to the park two years ago after getting her as a puppy. To start with, she kept her on the lead for half the walk before letting her off and observing how she went.

She went at speed. Sage’s mum is an English staffie and her dad is a whippet. “She’s an odd mix,” Sheehy says. “She’s so quick. So super quick, but she’s also a big baby.”

A baby who needs to move. Buddy, not so much. He’s a dog who needs to feel secure.

“I think having both of them together has actually helped,” she says. “He’s helped calm her down a lot. And she has kind of helped build his confidence.”

Sheehy is a regular and, like everyone else, she says the contact is important for her charges. Sage had an enforced week at home, after which she started attacking other dogs. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, okay, never again. We’re walking every single day.’”

She seems very attuned to her dogs.

“You learn them,” she says. “You learn their actions and what they want, I suppose. It took me a while but I think I was just so obsessed with her. And I was just watching her every move and seeing what she would do. I suppose like a baby, eh?” Again, she laughs

Day’s Park is named for Eric Charles Day, who died in 1969. “At his wish this land has been dedicated for the delight and recreation of the people of Hamilton” reads a plaque at the park. He got his wish. This is the best dog park in Hamilton, hands down. Everyone agrees.

It’s so good it has its own Facebook page, Day’s Park Doggies , with photos taken by Kirsty Lyall. She’s a self-trained photographer who started with a point and shoot when she used to walk her own rhodesian ridgeback around the park, and has carried on since. These days she’s using a Pentax K-3, and mixes it up with photos of dogs playing as well as some on their own.

Dogs can get a bit freaked by the bigger lens, she says. But the opposite can also be true. “A lot of people take a lot of photos of their dogs. So those dogs know what cameras are. They’re like ‘are you ready for me?’”

Her payment is in pats. “It’s all about the pats. I get pats, I get slobbers, I get everything.”

Kristen is another dog walker who has come from out of town, to the north of Hamilton.. She builds the walk into a weekend routine that includes supermarket shopping. Boston has the barrel-like build of a purebred English bulldog, and he is here to smell lots and meet friends, Kristen, who asked her surname not be used over concerns around theft of bulldogs, says. She’s neatly equipped with poo bags and treats for Boston, all you need for a civilised walk. Not everyone takes care of their dog’s business, and Kristen is not sure why some don’t carry the bags. “It’s quite a pain if you accidentally stand on it.”

One who diligently deposits his dog’s droppings in the nearby, slightly whiffy, rubbish bin is Tom Bronlund, here with partner Sarah Dawe and their 10-month-old staffie cross, Billy, who they got from the pound eight months ago.

The couple, who shifted from Auckland and then rented for several months, started looking for a dog almost as soon as they bought their house. They’ve driven from Hillcrest, which they do most Saturdays and Sundays, in the absence of off-leash parks closer to home. It’s a stretch to say it’s a bone of contention, but they wonder why there aren’t more off-leash parks around the city. They’ve tried Resthills in Glenview, but it doesn’t have the same community as Day’s Park.

They mean dog community, but that involves a human community as well.

“This is probably the most social place in Hamilton,” Bronlund says. “We’ve talked to more people here than we would anywhere else, I’d say.”

Some of it, as newbie owners, is about harvesting experiences, picking up tips about the likes of training.

What would their own top tips for the park be?

Stick to the path is one, especially when the grass hasn’t been mown for a while, to avoid stepping in something nasty.

“I think it’s the best place to take a dog in Hamilton,” Bronlund says. “It’s a good open space. It’s got the water here. There’s lots of other dogs around and everyone’s very responsible.”

They’ve never had a bad experience with another dog at the park.

“It’s cute, there’s a few dogs that we see regularly so they kind of become friends,” Dawe says.

They can tell the dogs remember each other because they skip the normal greeting period and get straight into chasing each other.

“Sometimes you almost lose your dog if they’re down by the water,” Dawe says. “There’ll be 10, 15 dogs at once and it’s really chaotic.”

Billy is trying to play with a ball chaser. That’s unlikely to work out. Dawe says he just wants attention. He doesn’t care about the ball, but he’ll take off with it because he wants the dog to chase him.

Soon Billy turns his attention to another, more suitable dog. “They’ll just go for hours if we left them,” Bronlund says, as the excitable Billy momentarily loses control and performs a near somersault before getting straight back up and carrying on.

It’s a different park on a weekday, with fewer people. On Wednesday morning, Rachel McShane is walking Crash and Lulu, a study in contrasts. Crash is a big white swiss shepherd, Lulu a tiny black pug.

McShane has an abiding relationship with Day’s Park; her father’s name is on a seat in his favourite place beside the river, and her mother walked here – wearing red – pretty much every day for 50 years, most recently with her dog Chip, until a slip at the park in January stopped her. Gregor was “a violinist and a socialist”, she says; Cecilie is a pianist and music teacher.

“Cecilie would walk every day with the dog and then go home and play the piano.” Everybody knew her.

When Rachel walks along the bottom area by the river, she’ll sit in her dad’s seat, look at the view and contemplate things.

She and other family members, including sister Kristine, are helping Cecilie at the moment, and it means she’s tending to walk in the park just once daily instead of her preferred twice.

McShane sees plenty of regulars. It’s a community. Families without dogs come because they know it is a safe place to be around animals they can’t have themselves. Down the bottom by the river, people stand and talk. “It’s such a community, actually.”

She has a contrasting view to Dawe and Bronlund. “It’s good that there’s parks dribbled around Hamilton that have that facility for the dogs because the owners need it, the dogs need it.”

“And dog owners are generally really responsible,” she adds. Not always, though. Like her mother, Rachel had a fall at the park, in her case bowled by an out of control dog, breaking her leg and doing in her ACL. It was around then they got Crash, who is a support animal for her son who has autism. His impact has been amazing, she says. “It’s just having a friend who’s just your friend. It teaches young children and young people and adults how to relate to another being, it doesn’t matter that it’s not a human being.”

As unusual as swiss shepherds are, Crash is not the only one strolling the park this morning; off in the distance is Lucian, a patriarch who keeps all the others in line, McShane says. She often sees his owner walking with several others.

That’s the thing, you’re always bumping into people, including from your past. McShane went to Fairfield College with a New Zealand hockey rep who is now involved in coaching. She was walking in the park while recovering from her accident and thought this person looked familiar. They got chatting. “We’ve reconnected after, what, 30 years, going off and doing completely other things.”

In the afternoon, she is joined by daughter Jasmine and sister Kristine, along with Chip and Kristine’s labrador Tago Mago, named for a Jimi Hendrix album.

Kristine has been walking here a lot, including exercising Chip since Cecilie’s fall, and enthuses about the park. “It’s not my thing to go to try dog parks all over New Zealand. But I’ve been to many and I have to say this is probably the top of the list. It’s got everything. It’s got the river. It’s got the beautiful park up there. It’s got trees, shade, seats, including my dad’s. Places to park. It’s amazing. And it’s like a nice little bush walk, it’s got everything and you get a decent walk done.”

Day’s Park has a double personality on Saturday morning. One minute dogs, forever sniffing, are eddying everywhere. The next moment there is scarcely a dog or human in sight.

And then, finally, there’s what sounds like a fracas in the distance. But the dogs’ tails are up, and they’re just cavorting.

This place brings dogs together. And it brings humans together.

It’s day two for Darryl Eastwood. As he leaves the park he is deep in conversation with another owner.

Jess and Morgan Eades have also struck up conversations, and friendships, with fellow dog walkers here. Late last year, the couple got married. The original plan was Rarotonga in 2020, but Covid ruled that out. They settled on Aotea, near Kāwhia, a beach Jess’s family have been going to for 30 years. Sadly, Mika couldn’t be with them; the lack of fencing at the property made that impossible. Among the guests, however, were friends they made walking their dogs at Day’s Park.