Bull Creek District Park

I had written on one of my earlier posts about a dog park here in Austin called Red Bud Isle. I had a few people leave me feedback in regards to that post; one person specifically said that the Red Bud Isle dog park â€œpales considerable to Austin’s best leash-free dog park, Bull Creekâ€. So since Bull Creek District Park is suppose to be better, I had to go check it out. The park is a little closer to my house (at least easier to get to) than Red Bud Isle.
I was for sure hoping that Bull Creek would live up to its hype. The verdict- Bull Creek District Park is disgusting. When I first got there I was excited because the park looked really cool from the parking lot. As we were walking down closer to the creek I noticed that several kids were swimming by a little waterfall and dogs were hopping in and out of the water. When I get to the water I noticed immediately that there was a green sludge floating on the top of the water. However, the sludge was mostly confined to the area away from the waterfall. The sludge wasnâ€™t really the biggest problem though; I noticed beer cans, dog shit, cigarette butts and other trash collecting by some big rocks on the other side of the creek. Regardless of my first impression, my dog Payton jumped in and went wading around.I even went in the water hoping to cool off but the water was far from cool. Still there were several kids swimming with their parents looking on. Payton and I went on up stream where there were several dogs playing around. This area was a lot more shallow and moving more swiftly than the lower section – but still the water was filthy. I noticed a lady on the other side from me who was letting her infant crawl around in that same filthy water to splash and play. I felt bad that my dog was in that filth: I canâ€™t imagine letting a baby play in there.

I hope to give this park another try but I believe it will have to wait until we get a week’s worth of rain to wash the crap down stream. Overall, besides the trash, irresponsible parents and disgusting water the park still is not nearly as nice as Red Bud Isle Dog Park.