For the convenience of dog owners popping into the Eden Shopping Center, a parking lot can be found just to the left of the main entrance.
It consists of two hitching posts and a couple of water bowls atop a perfect rectangle of artificial turf. To ensure that visitors understand the purpose of this setup, a helpful sign indicates a “P” for “parking,” and the silhouette of a dog for “dog.” The lot’s maximum capacity is unspecified, but I have never seen more than two dogs there at once. This leads me to conclude that the parking lot is a perfectly adequate size to accommodate the canine traffic in the area.
But far more noteworthy than its size is its existence – as an artefact of the life and reality of Prague 10. It says that Prague 10 is the kind of place you can leave your dog outside the mall to go grocery shopping just as the Old West was the kind of place you could leave your horse outside the saloon to enjoy some whiskey or a quick-draw duel at high noon.
Almost half of Czech households have dogs, they generally train them very well, and as such the capital is an exceedingly dog-friendly city. This makes fertile conditions for artificial turf lots and means that people really utilize them. Like earthworms in the soil or birds chirping after a storm, the dogs parked outside the Eden Shopping Center are a simple indication that the environment is healthy and life is okay.