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'Dubai needs a dog park'

Dubai - It's a plight of all pet owners - where to walk the pets. 'Thank you for not walking your pet on the promenade' read the signs erected along Marina Walk.

Millie is a two-year-old dog adopted from Sniff, the animal rescue group by Haitham L, a Palestinian who has lived in the UAE for 20 years. Millie is the name she already had when he got her. Haitham works in the sales and marketing department of a beverage company in Dubai. He used to work in Abu Dhabi earlier. School was in Dubai, college was in the States. But now he lives in Dubai Marina, and walks Millie twice a day around the block, and near Skydive Dubai. It's a plight of all pet owners - where to walk the pets. 'Thank you for not walking your pet on the promenade' read the signs erected along Marina Walk.
"For a pet friendly neighbourhood it isn't very pet friendly," Haitham says. JLT (Jumeirah Lakes Towers) on the other hand - he says about the neighbourhood across the road, with its large green lawns - is very pet friendly.
Dubai needs a dog park, he feels. They could cordon off a small area of Sky Dive, he suggests.
Haitham likes Dubai for the comforts. "And it's fun," he says. Haitham has family and friends in Dubai so a social life isn't a problem here. But he can see how it might be if someone moves to Dubai and doesn't know anyone. The worrying aspect about the city, he says is that "it doesn't seem like a long term place." He says he misses an outdoor life. "If I get a good job in California - definitely," he says about plans to move out, eventually. But for now, Millie has to be walked, and since he can't stretch her along the breezy Promenade, around the block will have to do.
nivriti@khaleejtimes.com 
Interviewed by Nivriti Butalia
Street Talk is a weekly column to get a glimpse of people's lives in UAE.