The controversy over dogs and park-users at Eden Street Park has always been tense, but some now believe that the frustrations have led to the poisoning of a dog in the park last weekend.
A dog named ‘Gunner,’ looking to be a Pit Bull mix in photos, was reported on the CharlestownDogs page to have died after being walked in the park. Reports from a veterinarian indicated that the dog had been poisoned, the CharlestownDogs page read.
A spokesman from CharlestownDogs said they don’t know whether the death was intentional or if the dog accidentally ingested something poisonous.
“As far as I’m concerned, there is no story other than the dog became sick, the vet said poison, and the owner assumed Eden Street Park,” he said. “Rat poison takes two to three days to be noticed in large dogs.”
He said the idea that the dog was poisoned in the park is just a suggestion of the owner, which was fanned to flames by many of the television news stations highlighting the story.
Another dog was said to have died suspiciously after being in Eden Street Park last November.
State and City officials in Charlestown were sought out, and they alerted the authorities.
The Parks Department said it sent out inspectors on Tuesday to look for anything suspicious in the park, but found nothing.
That said, the animosity in the park between dog people and non-dog people is quite real. That tension has shown up in letters to this paper, as well as planning meetings for the re-design of Eden Street Park in 2018 and 2019. The same tension has existed in Doherty Park, as well on Bunker Hill Street, where off-leash dogs collide often with children at play.
The crux of it all has been the need for a proper, fenced-off dog park in one or more of the parks. That was the conclusion during the Eden Street planning process, where there were many calls for a dog park to be included on the eastern edge of the park when it is re-built. That rebuild has yet to begin, though.