Dogs Love Historic Sites Too

After seeing my post on Dogs Love Museums Too, Paul Lear, the Historic Site Manager at Fort Ontario in Oswego, NY,  shared with us the experiences of General Brown.  He noted:

Families including kids come in to see General Brown.  When he hears someone downstairs he barks and runs down the stairs to meet them.  As long as you have a treat, he will sit, lie down, go to sleep, roll over, dance, shake your hand, and wave.  He’ll speak if you say “Woodchucks,”  and shares a two-tiered bunk with the fort cat, “Jeff Davis.”  The General’s job at the fort is to clear the ramparts of woodchucks, and as you can see from the attached ad he does a lot of promotional work.

Not all historic sites or museums are equipped to handle dogs, but if you are at a site that does have dog-friendly grounds, it makes sense to let people know, much like they do at Fort Ontario.  Even if they do not come with dogs, it is a mini surprise-and-delight to a dog owner to see that they welcome dogs, and gives that visitor an excuse to come back (as my husband and I did when we learned that the sculpture garden at the DeCordova was dog-friendly).

And because I cannot resist, below is another photo of General Brown, hard at work at Fort Ontario as guest conductor for the Syracuse Symphony (great partnership, by the way!).    

- Susie

  

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Comments

[James Chung, Reach Advisors]

As Susie said, dogs are not appropriate at all museums and historic sites, but for those that do allow dogs on the grounds they can create a distinct advantage with a dog-friendly policy. We certainly have most of our master planned communities creating a distinct advantage from that by creating dog parks and other dog-friendly features. It's not just a distinct advantage for the dogs...dogs just happen to have this amazing ability to bring people together.

And to cement the point further, museums may want to consider a cute doghouse at the entrance, not so they sleep there, but to signal the policy. Same goes for a water bowl.