Why are dog owners so entitled?

Hi all, genuinely need some clarity because this really crossed a line for me.

I went to an open public field today to set up a small picnic to surprise a friend for their birthday. I arrived early, before anyone else was there, and set everything up peacefully.

Shortly after, several dog owners arrived with their dogs. Totally fine, it’s a shared public space. I wasn’t interacting with any dogs or doing anything to attract them.

What wasn’t fine was that multiple UNLEASHED dogs repeatedly ran into my picnic area.

One dog ran over and messed up my “Happy Birthday” banner over and over again. I had to reset my setup about five times. The owner only apologised after the fourth time, and even then it felt half-hearted. The dog was never leashed. Another dog then came over and started going through my bags looking for food. A third dog later ran straight onto my mat again looking for food.

This wasn’t a one-off accident. It just kept happening.

What really pissed me off was the attitude from some of the owners. One of them asked me, “Did anyone tell you this is a dog park?” From what I understand, this place is NOT an official dog park. There are no NParks signs, no fencing, no designated dog facilities. Just because people commonly bring their dogs here doesn’t automatically make it a dog park.

Another owner asked if we had food (obviously yes, it’s a picnic), how long we would be there, and where we stayed. That honestly made it feel like I wasn’t supposed to be there with food, while their dogs were freely running into my things and disrupting us.

From what I know, AVS and NParks regulations require dogs to be leashed in non-designated areas, and owners are responsible for keeping their dogs under control. Yet the expectation here seemed to be that I should just tolerate dogs repeatedly invading my space.

For context, this field isn’t even properly designed for dogs. There’s a roughly 1.5m wall dogs have to jump down to even enter the field.

I didn’t confront anyone, shout, or touch the dogs aggressively. I just kept fixing my things and tolerating it, but it left a really bad taste.

So I’m honestly asking: are dogs actually supposed to be leashed in non-designated NParks areas? Is this something NParks or AVS would even enforce, or is this kind of behaviour just socially accepted now? Would reporting repeated unleashed dogs even do anything?

Not trying to start a dog versus human argument, but surely public spaces aren’t meant to function as unofficial dog parks where everyone else just has to deal with it.