Woodlands Park

PARKS

Woodlands Park

I’ll call this one Woodlands Park because I’ve got no idea what it’s actually called and it’s situated on the corner of Woodlands Drive and Engelsteeg Street in Queenswood, Pretoria. This park is quite small and very quiet – which we prefer. Apart from the occasional homeless person camping out and tennis coaches with their students we are almost always alone.

Sometimes on Saturdays there are tennis tournaments on the courts but apart from that not much is going on here. The park does however border on the traffic-heavy Soutpansberg road and even though it is fenced the entrances pose escape areas should your dog decide to run out. 

While this park is not really worth going out of your way for, we find the following advantages:

• It is conveniently close to home for a quick scenery-change

• It is quiet and peaceful

• It has water tabs

• I can practice my tennis serves on the court since Lilly is a talented ball-retriever. In fact it is on these courts that we taught her Fetch when she was young. Unfortunately she has developed the habit of running on-court in the middle of tennis games, catching any moving ball and running out again – with a following of angry couches and hysterical children chasing after her.

The former point now force us to take a tennis racket along so we can hit her her own tennis ball to sprint after on the grass. Fetch for Lilly started with us throwing a tennis ball for her. Unfortunately as she became quicker she ran the ball in after 2 – 3 seconds despite our best efforts. This led us to getting Lilly her own spoon: 

This lasted only a month or two since she was still able to run the ball in way too quickly. This then finally lead us to the racket technique. An then while searching online for a picture of the plastic spoon ball thrower I found what may very likely be Lilly’s Christmas prezzie this year - The hyperdog 4-ball launcher:

Unfortunately Stitch is not in the least bit interested in fetching balls. He’d much rather prefer grooming the park’s laws and ridding it of all nasty chicken bones.

One never realizes the extent of littered chicken bones until one walks the dog. It really amazes me every time – it seems like in South Africa chicken is the all-time on-the go snack. I’ve only ever once seen with my own eyes somebody throwing chicken bones on the ground: I was sitting in my parked car and right next to me was a man in his Mercedes shamelessly consuming a whole grilled chicken which was placed on his lap. With his bare hands he was breaking apart the chicken portion-by-portion and I was amazed by how a whole drumstick could enter his mouth and without him seeming to move a muscle, the bone came out as clean as a whistle! Which was then nonchalantly thrown out the window, just a few meters from my car. I guess chicken bones are organic, making it not too much of a Greenpeace concern, but still it is bad for dogs :-(