The Greatest Dog Park in the World
![The Greatest Dog Park in the World](/content/images/size/w960/2020/04/kaira.jpg)
Before I moved to Chicago, I had never seen a lake so big that you could stand on one side and not see the other. Lake Michigan totally upended my idea of what a lake could be. A lake so big that it might as well be an ocean.
In the same way, even coming from Chicago whose motto is “Urbs in Horto”, Latin for “City in a Garden”, Brooklyn’s Prospect Park has totally upended my idea of what a park can be. A park so big that it might as well be a forest preserve.
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Here are two maps shown at the same scale. The first is downtown Chicago. The second is Prospect Park.
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Prospect Park is bigger than Chicago’s “Loop”. It’s got six playgrounds, nine tennis courts, seven baseball fields, three miles of hiking trails, waterfalls, a lagoon, a zoo, and a carousel.
Some parks in New York City have “off-leash” hours from 9pm until 9am. Thanks to the lobbying efforts of a Brooklyn group called FIDO, this includes three of the largest open areas in Propsect Park: Long Meadow, the Nethermead, and the Peninsula.
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And thus, every morning – and especially on the weekends – the greatest dog park in the world can be found in Brooklyn.
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