Dog parks: August 2008 Archives

Ruoholahti dog park

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Hobie checked out his new neighborhood the other day, and there is a dog park literally across the street from our new apartment.

It's not the greatest dog park, and it's very industrial. The dog park is a large rectangle, but wide enough that we can play fetch without worrying about the ball landing outside the park.

One one side of the park is a street, and on the other side is a container terminal. We could actually see containers being shuffled back and forth.

The park is quite large, but it's not a park we would go to unless it was right nearby.

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There are a couple of benches in the park, and while there is a path along one of the long sides, most of it is covered in dirt and grass. Hobie will surely need a bath after playing here on a rainy fall afternoon.

The park was empty when we first entered, so we took out the frisbee.

Hobie has gotten a wart-like growth next to one of his teeth. The vet in Norway said it was nothing to worry about, and that we could just deal with it the next time he was under anesthesia. One side effect is that he will sometimes bleed a little bit, but he doesn't seem to be in any discomfort.

Despite this, he ran as fast as his four little legs could carry him to play with his toy.

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Despite that industrial setting, Hobie approved of the park. In fact, there seemed to be so much to smell that he was too busy to look at the camera.


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After playing for a little bit, another dog came into the park. Poola, a labradoodle. She was only two, but because she was already now much larger than Hobie, they seemed to get along fine. He growled a little bit, but for the most part they were satisfied sniffing each other's butts.

She jumped around and barked at Hobie a few times, and he whined and ran around us, but it helped that we were chatting with the owner, and Hobie had to deal with this strange new creature by himself.

Laakso Dal dog park

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Helsinki has a large park called Central Park.

Yesterday, we took Hobie up there on a 3-hour walk. The park area is beautiful, and there were lots of people out enjoying the nice weather.

On our way through the park we passed through an equestrian center. Hobie didn't seem to care much about the horses, and was (as usual) more interested in practicing his vacuum-cleaner skills on the grass.

We also ran into a dog park there (the official name is Keskuspuiston koira-aitaus). At first it looked a little small, but we decided to check it out anyways.

The entry to a few of the dog parks we've seen have a big dog bulletin board in front, and this one was no exception.

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The park had a decent area with gravel, and then a wooded area behind it. There were lots of trees, and treeroots to smell and run around. It took us about 5 minutes to walk around the dog park.

This is Hobie in the front of the gravel area.

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Although there were no other dogs in the park, Hobie had a good time. He sniffed and ran around by himelf. The last shot is Hobie running around.

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Although Helsinki has a lot of dog parks, some of them are a little sad. We've been to a couple that are very small, and there are no plants, just gravel and some tree trunks to smell. However, it's better than nothing, and it's probably difficult to maintain a lot of plants in a dog park.

This park, however, was very nice. The forest setting makes it much nicer than some of the inner city parks, yet it's very accessible from the nearby residential areas.

Look at the below map for how to find it.

About this Archive

This page is a archive of entries in the Dog parks category from August 2008.

Dog parks: May 2007 is the previous archive.

Dog parks: September 2008 is the next archive.

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