I write this email to express my disappointment with my first experience at the Milford Oyster Festival.  My husband and I relocated to Connecticut a few years ago and have spent our weekends exploring the state.  It is fairly typical for us to wake up on a Saturday morning and decide to drive to Mystic or West Hartford or Greenwich or Fairfield or Madison or Hartford or New London or Litchfield to explore the town and its offerings with our family.  Today it was Milford&rsquo;s turn.  We had not done any pre-planning all we knew was that there was a nice boardwalk there where we thought we would take a stroll&hellip;so in the car we went.

When we arrived in Milford we were excited to see that the town had an outdoor festival taking place.  As an event coordinator for a university I have a great appreciation for all that goes into putting something like this together.  We paid our $5.00 to park at a church and headed towards the festival.  As we strolled through the vendor area I was thinking that this was a great event for a family and that it was a wonderful surprise trip that we had happened upon.  About 15 minutes into our festival experience we were greeted by a Milford Police Officer who asked us to leave.  I was shocked and confused.  He said that dogs were not allowed.   As I indicated at the beginning of this email, we explore the state with our family every weekend.  Our family includes myself, my husband, our 2 year old daughter and our 5 year old Great Dane.  We told the officer that we did not see any signs that indicated that dogs were not allowed&hellip;his response was that it was &ldquo;in the paper&rdquo;.  Obviously we had not seen it in the paper since we didn&rsquo;t even know the festival was taking place before stumbling upon it this morning.  We then asked if we could cut through the festival to get down to the boardwalk and his response was &ldquo;no, because the festival was taking place everywhere.&rdquo;  He once again asked us to leave&hellip;.so off we went&hellip;back to the car with heads hung low.

As we were leaving a very nice woman who was a vendor explained to us that years ago someone brought a boa constrictor to the festival and it scared people.  I can understand that.  What I don&rsquo;t understand is why the festival committee would take an isolated incident and make it rule.  It&rsquo;s like building a  church for Christmas and Easter.  It would also seem to me that if the &ldquo;no pets rule&rdquo; is going to be so strictly enforced then notification of it should be obvious&hellip;signs should be posted at the event and not just in the newspaper.  

You see, our dog travels with us everywhere and because of that we look for information before entering a building, a store, a restaurant, public transportation etc&hellip; with her.  Today before we walked past the barricades we looked for signs, we looked around and saw other dogs and so we assumed that it was alright.  We have taken her to Manhattan 6 times where she has been permitted to enter the AOL Tim Warner Building at Columbus Circle and dine with us at restaurants.  So, why on earth would I have ever considered that she would not be permitted to enter an outdoor festival in a public place which had vendors which included an animal rescue organization.  It just doesn&rsquo;t make any sense.

My husband and I left Milford today with sheer disappointment and this incident cast a shadow over the rest of our day.  We returned home this afternoon and as soon as I sat down I logged onto your website to send this email.  While I was browsing I also looked for notification of the policy there.  Perhaps I didn&rsquo;t look in the right sections, but I couldn&rsquo;t find it there either.

In any event, I can assure you that it doesn&rsquo;t matter much because we won&rsquo;t be returning to the festival or to the City of Milford ever again.

With disappointment,

JoLynn Kennedy