Last summer I wrote that Seattle Parks and Recreation is developing the OLA (Off-Lease Areas) Strategic Plan which “will guide the operations of existing OLAs, explore alternative service models and create a strategy for the potential acquisition and development of future OLAs… It will also provide direction on how to spend Park District funding designated for OLAs in ‘2.5 Improve Dog Off-Leash Areas’ funding initiative described in the six year.”
Last Fall, Seattle Parks recruited park users to join in a conversation around how it can balance the needs of people and dogs in Seattle parks.
Seattle Dog Owners and Park Users Sound Off
I participated in one of these groups and noticed quickly that most participants split into 2 groups: Dog owners who want more off-leash dog parks vs. people concerned that off-leash dogs are destroying plants and scaring wildlife in parks where dogs are supposed to be on leash. You won’t be surprised to know I was in the more off-leash dog parks group.
These same groups also faced off at the Parks Department’s monthly meeting in Queen Anne.
Although I’m not Catholic, I should make a couple of confessions before I go further:
- I’ve let our dogs off-leash in parks where it’s illegal
- I initially classified the people concerned that off-leash dogs are wrecking Seattle’s parks as dog haters.
But my attitude about the “dog haters” changed as I listened to their stories.
Problems caused by off leash dogs
- One man who is a birdwatcher said that he no longer goes to Discovery Park to enjoy his hobby because off-leash dogs chased off the dozens of bird species that once lived there. The most prevalent bird species there now are crows and sea gulls.
- Representatives of Friends of Martha Washington Parks and Friends of Lincoln Park said off-leash dogs were destroying plants and owners weren’t picking up their dog’s poop
- Elderly people in the group said they can’t go to city parks any longer because they are afraid of getting knocked over and injured by rambunctious off-leash dogs.
By the end of the meeting, I agreed with the “dog haters.”
While I firmly believe that Seattle needs more off-leash dog parks, dog owners do not have the right to keep a significant group of citizens out of city parks because they don’t want to walk their dogs on-leash or take them to an off-leash park.
It’s ridiculous that off-leash dogs are keeping elderly Seattleites out of city parks.
They already have few recreational/exercise options, and taking away their opportunity to enjoy our parks is unfair.
So is robbing people of the chance to birdwatch and tearing up landscaping.
Seattle Leash Law Violations
Seattle Parks notes on its website that people filed 4818 off-leash complaints Seattle Animal Shelter since 2009. They also wrote 411 letters written to Seattle Parks and Recreation since 2010. 41% of them were related to leash violation (164 emails). Complaints fall into the following themes:
- Owners who walk their dog on-leash frustrated by off-leash dogs
- Adults and parents of children feeling threatened by dogs
- Feces create public health concern (e.g., feces in athletic fields, in sand on beaches, playgrounds, etc.)
- Health of natural areas and wildlife (e.g., plant damage, endangered seals on beaches)
- Asset damage (e.g., turf damage on sport fields, run patterns on grass, holes from digging)
This map from Seattle Parks and Recreation shows where officers issued the most tickets for off-leash dogs since 2009. The areas with the most tickets are Discovery Park, Greenlake Park, and Magnuson Park. Greenlake and Magnuson already have off-lease areas. Image from Seattle Parks and Recreation.
Off-leash dogs have cause so much damage in Lincoln Park in West Seattle that an intern for Friends of Lincoln Park working to help restore the forest there decided to observe dog owners and their pets.
In a story on the West Seattle Blog, he said that in the 3 90-minute “samples” he took at different spots in the park, 25% of the dogs he saw were off-leash.
He also told the West Seattle Blog that the effects go beyond the “trampling of plants.”
When that happens, “it’s easier for seeds to disperse and the forest edge to break down.
Those seeds are seldom the desirable ones. Instead, they’re the invasives, the berry-laden plants like ivy, holly, blackberries, cotoneaster.”
Ironically, one of Seattle’s nicer dog parks, Westcrest Park, is minutes away from Lincoln Park. I’ve also seen off-leash dogs at Greenlake Park and Magnuson Park even though both parks have off-leash areas.
How can we expect to get people to support devoting more space to off-leash dog parks when people let their dogs off-leash in restricted areas within minutes of an off-leash area?
Seattle Dog Owners – Please be Courteous
The bottom line is that if dog owners want other people, especially those that use the parks, to respect and support our desire for more off-leash dog parks in Seattle, then we need to respect their desire to go to a city park without worrying about being knocked over by an unleashed dog or stepping in dog poop.
Like I said earlier, I’ve let our dogs off-leash in parks where it isn’t allowed, but not anymore. I now understand more clearly the damage they cause.
And I don’t want to be the reason people without dogs won’t go to a park.
I urge all other Seattle dog owners to do it as well.
The Seattle Parks and Recreation Board will meet to discuss the OLA Strategic Plan this Thursday, February 26 at 6:30 PM at 100 Dexter Avenue North, 98109. The public is welcome to attend.
Note: The public interested in this planning should arrive at 7:00 pm because of an award ceremony at 6:30 which we have been asked not to interrupt.
As for the content above, I very much agree Robert. Seattle is simply too dense to allow dogs to run amuck in all parks.
BUT there are many, many complexities missing from the above argument – from the ability for Seattle to have “no dog” parks, as New York City does, to the ability to have “off-leash hours” as Portland, Vancouver, and New York City does, to provide more land. Fenced areas don’t work for every dog, and particularly the kind that Seattle has built over the last 15 years (hint: TINY – five of them share an acre, when Seattle has over 6000 acres of parkland). Essentially one must handle access to land, enforcement, and education to truly manage the problem you’re describing. And Seattle is not handling any of the three well. Which leads to the chaos you’re describing.
I moved from the UK where there are no leash laws in London. With a population density higher than Seattle it somehow worked. Every green space was a dog friendly off leash area. People knew to keep their dogs under control as there were strict laws about dangerous dogs. People and dogs got along and dogs were able to run on grass, run through trees, and play. In Seattle dogs are restricted to gravel areas that are so overused that they reek of urine. We must have more freedom to take our dogs for some exercise.
Thank you so much for this post, Dog Spot. We appreciate it immensely. Thank you especially for recognizing that this is not an issue between dog ‘haters’ and dog ‘lovers. We all love dogs! (How can you not?)
But, we also love all the other living creatures—including people—that share our few remaining natural parklands and green spaces.
I would like to point out that comparing Seattle’s parks and Off-Leash areas to places like Portland and Vancouver is not fair. Portland and Vancouver have thousands of acres of natural lands—we have nothing like that. Forest Park alone is over 5000 acres, about ten times as big as our largest park, and Portland has well over twice as much park acreage in total. Vancouver’s Stanley Park and Pacific Spirit Park are roughly 2000 and 1000 acres. Compare that to Lincoln Park at 135 acres.
The point is, we have few resources and a lot of people to accommodate, and this is only going to get worse with growth. If we want to have anything resembling “nature” available for future generations, we MUST use this precious land sustainably, as well as equitably.
Social norms change. Smokers”rights” have been radically reduced over the past 20 years. People will adjust to new expectations. Before the leash laws home owners expected to pick up the poop that other peoples dogs left on their front lawns. Now dog o owners are largely more v considerate. I think dog owners should have certain times to run their pets on our playfields. Mostly we could rely on them to clean up the poop. Human users would soon learn and adopt to the need to do a quick survey of any field before starting a game.
My small dog and I got charged by a crazy pit bull off leash this afternoon at Seattle Center Park. Needless to say I am extremely upset that this young tattooed woman made the inane decision to let her dog be off leash in my neighborhood. How irresponsible and selfish of her ! Had she been a second late my dog or I would have been seriously hurt or bitten. Thank God my little dog barked back as she tried to defend both of us and I pulled her up quickly.
There should be stiffer fines and I guarantee that these idiots would consider stop being absurdly foolish and become more responsible dog owners.
While it’s irresponsible on her part to have the dog off leash, your judgement of her appearance invalidates this complaint.
I am a responsible dog owner. I have invested a lot of time into shaping the behavior of my dog. I always clean up. I always leash my dog at appropriate times. My dog does not run “at large”.
Here is my rebuttal for each of your points –
1. Environmental (wildlife & asset damage) – City parks are far more impacted by human use than dogs, but that’s ok because that is the point. If people want to fight to protect wildlife ranges I think that is great. There are millions of acres at risk outside of town. and the real problem is not dogs but human exploitation. In any case, a dog on leash will still damage turf, but less so than a pair of cleats so this argument doesn’t hold up.
2. Adults and parents of children should be far more worried about dangers posed by humans. Furthermore, a leash law will not protect a child from a poorly cared for dog that has ended up off leash by accident. Parents should teach their children how to act around dogs and how to distinguish responsible and irresponsible dog owners rather than just teach them to be irrationally afraid.
3. Dog feces can result from a dog on leash so this is a bogus argument. Therefore, what we really need is responsible dog ownership.
4. Elderly people are also likely to step on broken glass or be knocked over by rambunctious people – or dogs on leash for that matter. This is just another argumentum ad passiones that is not actually supported by statistics. People should let go of irrational fears. My elderly neighbor recently died due to health complications after a mentally ill drug user pushed him to the ground at the super market. No one needs to be afraid of my dog. We need to put more focus on solving the real problems.
In addition to being a dog owner – I am also a father of two children. In the same way that I have worked to raise them to become well socialized and good humans – I have also carefully raised my dog to be good natured on or off leash. Breeding, training and knowledge of canine behavior is really the most important thing and not the irrational, ineffective and unjust leash law.
My dog is not aggressive. It gets regular exercise and does not approach strange people. There is zero danger that my dog will knock anybody over or cause any sort of nuisance to others. I have been careful to avoid this kind of behavior from the very beginning.
Sooner or later I must “unleash” my children on the world, and similarly my dog needs to run. A dog leash and a fenced yard does not guarantee that my dog will never become a menace. I see poorly cared for and consequently anti-social dogs on leash all the time and it’s really scary. But I have selected a dog breed and temperament that was appropriate for the environment I live in because this is my real responsibility. A more rational solution is to make laws that enforce responsible dog ownership. Dog owners should be prepared to do the work to ensure that their animal is not a menace to society.
Meanwhile, at my local park (Golden Gardens) the number of humans coming to the park in the past 5 years has increased dramatically. Property developers are getting rich while my park is getting ruined. I regularly see piles of trash. (I no longer let my children walk on the sand barefoot because of all of the broken glass.) There are human feces everywhere and encampments of homeless drug users. I rarely see my tax dollars at work to address these issues, but I see animal control all the time ready to harass me. I guess it’s easier for local government to pick on me than to do their jobs. No thank you King County.
But it’s not just dangerous human use. It’s also heavy lawful use that is causing a far greater impact on plants and wildlife. Frankly, it’s just silly and ridiculous for someone to suggest my dog is causing damage while hundreds of soccer cleated kids run up and down all day. But this is ok. This is the point of a city park.
If people want to fight the environmental battle they should be fighting against property developers and timber barons, etc. There are hundreds of millions of acres of wildlife ranges at risk whereas we are talking about a few thousands acres of intercity designated human use parks. So for me, the environmental argument just doesn’t hold up. It’s really just a trumped up argument used by the “haters”.
Yes, you first called them “haters” and have now retracted this point of view. Well, I don’t agree. These people ARE haters because at the same time that I watch all of the bad and anti-social behavior of so many human beings in my park, there are these people that go out of their way to come over and tell me to leash my dog. Why?
I never let my dog off leash in crowded or peak times. Instead, I now visit the park in the middle of winter or at 6am. Yet on numerous occasions while I have been off in my deserted area of the park these people will go out of their way to come and tell me I’m in the wrong. (Obviously, they aren’t afraid of my dog and they don’t have to be.)
These are the people that don’t like animals or are irrationally afraid of them. The same people who don’t like dogs and consider them filthy or whatever. Well, I think these people are a part of the problem. These people should mind their own business since I am not actually bothering them in any way.
Finally, it’s just not rational for people to be afraid of using a park because of the threat of unleashed dogs. Instead, people should be more concerned about humans who are statistically the real danger. Are the dog haters also walking up to the groups of people drinking and burning illegal fires all over the park these days? I doubt it. And there I am in some remote corner of the park at 6am. I am throwing a ball to my dog and likely picking up the broken glass. Get over it. Pick on someone else because the haters are in the wrong and I’m standing my ground.
Wow, that’s a lot to ponder. Thank you for taking the time to write your comments. I’ll try to address your points.
1. Environmental (wildlife & asset damage) – City parks are far more impacted by human use than dogs, but that’s ok because that is the point. If people want to fight to protect wildlife ranges I think that is great. There are millions of acres at risk outside of town. and the real problem is not dogs but human exploitation. In any case, a dog on leash will still damage turf, but less so than a pair of cleats so this argument doesn’t hold up.
Yes, human exploitation is the biggest problem facing the environment, and of course there are millions of acres at risk outside town, but we’re talking about Seattle’s parks, not the overall effect of humans on the environment. Humans do impact the park but I’m not talking about turf damage, and neither were the people in the meetings I attended. The problem is dogs what dogs do to the vegetation that has been planted. The pee on it, they poop in it, they dig in it, they run through it. That’s what people are upset about.
2. Adults and parents of children should be far more worried about dangers posed by humans. Furthermore, a leash law will not protect a child from a poorly cared for dog that has ended up off leash by accident. Parents should teach their children how to act around dogs and how to distinguish responsible and irresponsible dog owners rather than just teach them to be irrationally afraid.
I think it’s patently unfair to say adults should be worried about human dangers. Try telling that to a person whose kid was bitten by a dog. Would it be irrational to be afraid of a dog if the child had been bitten before? Of course parents should teach kids not how to act around dogs, but do you really expect that to work for a 5 or 6 year old? Should he/she be expected not to be irrationally afraid when a large dog is bearing down on him (or her)? And no one is arguing that leash laws prevent every kid from being bitten by a dog, but that doesn’t mean they should be ignored. Laws don’t deter all people from stealing or murdering either, yet I don’t hear anyone saying we should get rid of those them.
3. Dog feces can result from a dog on leash so this is a bogus argument. Therefore, what we really need is responsible dog ownership.
No, it’s not. If people allow their dogs off-leash the dog can and will poop in areas where the owner can’t see it.
4. Elderly people are also likely to step on broken glass or be knocked over by rambunctious people – or dogs on leash for that matter. This is just another argumentum ad passiones that is not actually supported by statistics. People should let go of irrational fears. My elderly neighbor recently died due to health complications after a mentally ill drug user pushed him to the ground at the super market. No one needs to be afraid of my dog. We need to put more focus on solving the real problems.
This is a real problem to people who are frail or have health issues. I have listened to people say that they are afraid to go to the park because of stray dogs. It is not an irrational fear, and it’s insensitive for you to say otherwise. Sure there are lots of other things they should be afraid of, but that doesn’t make their fear of off leash dogs any less relevant. This may not be a “real problem” to you but to someone with limited mobility and has few options for enjoying the outdoors, it’s a huge problem.
As I said in my article, I’ve let my dogs off-leash in parks where it isn’t allowed. And as a dog owner, I’m frustrated by the lack of off-leash areas in Seattle. It’s obvious that there are bigger problems in the world than dogs that shouldn’t be off-leash, but that doesn’t cancel out someone’s right to be concerned about it.
It’s great your dog is well-behaved, but many others aren’t. And how are people supposed to differentiate between a well-trained dog and an out of control dog when it’s running towards them? Neither kids nor adults should be expected to dog behavior experts.
I don’t understand this whole us vs. them attitude. People on both sides overreact. Both sides have bad actors. But categorically dismissing legitimate concerns about off-leash dogs is just shortsighted and unrealistic.
Slow clap. Bravo, my friend, I could not have said it better. We should go walk our dogs off leash some early morning.
Dog owners in Seattle let their dogs off leash with impunity. Upon engaging with them, as I have done on multiple occasions, they typically aver that their dog is well trained, their dog isn’t a danger, their dog can’t be subjected to the miseries of the designated off-leash areas. Of course, it’s not their dog; it’s always the other dog that’s trouble. The fact is that as a group, Seattle dog owners regularly flout the city ordinances, and then try to justify this with the commonly-sited statistic that Seattle has more dogs than children. So what? In what possible way does that make it justifiable to ignore public norms, environmental repercussions, public safety, and city ordinances? Theirs is a life-style argument, which they are trying to couch as a human vs. animal rights argument. But when they try to justify their position by equating dog ownership statistics to human demographics, what they are really saying is: “I’m a human owning a dog, therefore my needs should be treated with the equivalency of those of a human raising a child.” Are you kidding me?? This is a specious argument that has been given way to much air-time! As a society, do we agree that the needs and rights of pets are equivalent to the needs and rights of children? Really?? For the record, I’m neither a parent nor a dog owner, and I actually happen to really like dogs. But I also know that our future does not depend upon our pets; our future depends upon our children. So until dogs in the park are at risk of being bitten by off-leash babies, or until babies leave their poop under the swing-set for all of us to step in, or until birds cease nesting in certain wild areas because the babies have run amok, or until decisions on our public spaces are made not by our children grown into the roles of public servants, but our pets, sitting in positions of public authority, like some bizarre black-velvet painting, please let us drop this ridiculous comparison. Dogs are not equivalent to children. The fact that there are more dogs than children in Seattle should not be reason to wrest the commons away from the public at large in order to preference pet owners over families and the rest of us.
Get off my lawn!
Thanks for your thoughtful commentary.
Thank you.
I’d also like to add that some of us have very small toy sized dogs that we’d like to walk as well. Even a “playful” bite from a large dog can crush and kill our dog instantly. I’m scared to take my yorkie out since a pit bull owner let his off-leash last week and it quickly approached mine (which is well-behaved and on a short leash). Quick thinking allowed me to escape that situation quickly, but I’m angry that I should even have to be worried about this at all.
I’m not exaggerating when I say leaving dogs off-leash can cause other’s lives to be in danger.
Thanks for sharing your story. I’m glad your dog is ok.