Dog Leash Laws May Tighten

Over the past week,  to four Bay Area public workshops hosted by the National Park Service on proposed regulations that would restrict and in some cases ban dogs from 21 areas within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, including Olema Valley and Tennessee Valley.

Several events featured  opposing the proposals, and the agency has extended the public comment period to May 30, though no more events are scheduled.

The 2,400-page draft plan, first issued Jan. 14, covers 21 specific areas within GGNRA, including a number of popular trails in and around Marin. For each area, the agency has outlined six possible policies and recommended one of them, ranging in severity from banning dogs completely in some areas to restricting the areas where dogs can be off leash in others.

We thought the debate around the proposed regulations within the 75,000-acre parkland provided a good opportunity to delve into the dog leash laws on the rest of the abundant open space around us.

There are nearly 20,000 licensed dogs in Marin, according to the Marin Humane Society, which estimates that there are approximately 60,000 dogs in Marin, based on the assumption that one-third of dog owners license their dogs. On city streets and developed areas dogs must be under the control of a responsible party at all times.

For each area of open space, enforcement is handled by both the law enforcement agency for that municipality and animal services officers for the Marin Human Society, which has a joint powers agreement with the county to enforce animal welfare laws throughout the county with the exception of state or federally owned lands.

Because so much of Marin is open space, enforcement is largely complaint-driven, as officers can’t patrol everywhere at once. As a result, agencies hope that dog owners simply abide by posted ordinances, but that isn’t always the case.

“You’ll see at dog parks there will be an ordinance sign posted and people will walk right by it with their dog off a leash,” said Carrie Harrington, spokesperson for the Marin Humane Society.

SAN ANSELMO

While dog owners who want to let their pets roam free are feeling the pinch from the park service, San Anselmo is home to one of just a few dog parks in Marin with the new Red Hill Dog Park behind Red Hill Shopping Center, at the end of Shaw Drive. The dog park is one of five no-leash dog parks in Marin, along with two on the humane society's campus in Novato.

Red Hill Dog Park, open since May 2009, is a fenced area about three-quarters as large as a football field. There are benches, new trees, drinking fountains (for dogs and owners alike), restrooms for owners and canisters for dog waste. There is also work underway to get more umbrellas to offer shade and to provide some kind of grass or wood chip cover for the park, which gets dusty in the summer.

The park is open one hour before dawn and one hour after dusk. Smaller and older dogs have a special time from 3 to 4 p.m.

There are three other areas in San Anselmo were dogs are allowed off-leash. 

at the end of San Francisco Boulevard allows dogs to run off-leash under voice control of their owner.

Two town parks allow off-leash dogs for limited hours. allows dogs to run off-leash in the lower lawn from 7 to 9 a.m. and from 4 p.m. until closing (30 minutes after sundown) on weekdays. And only from 4 p.m. until closing on weekends.

And, , dogs are allowed off-leash at Memorial Park from 7 to 8 a.m. and after one hour before sunset on weekdays. On weekends, the hours are slightly extended to 7 to 9 a.m. and after one hour before sunset. Dogs are not allowed off-leash in the picnic areas or the area around the Millennium Park playground, because of concerns about small children.

Technically, dogs are supposed to be on a leash in every other park in town.

FAIRFAX

There are no town parks in Fairfax were dogs are allowed off-leash. Dogs are allowed in open space land, however, as out-lined below.

According to California State Parks’ Marin District Superintendent Danita Rodriguez, dogs are only allowed in the park’s “developed” areas, meaning roads, campgrounds, picnic areas. They are not allowed on trails or fire roads at all. In areas where they are allowed, they must be on a leash at all times or kept inside a tent, for instance, overnight at a campground.

The park’s peace officers patrol its more than 25,000 acres, and Rodriguez encouraged dog owners to check the various laws of each land owner since so much of Marin’s open space is contiguous with that of other agencies.

“It is really confusing for people,” she said. “They could start out on one land manager’s prop and end up on another who has different regulations.”

No dogs. Period.

With few exceptions (like Santa Margarita Island Preserve in San Rafael), dogs are allowed on all Open Space lands as long as they are on a leash. Dogs are permitted off-leash on the district’s fire roads, including those above San Anselmo and Fairfax, but must be on leash when in sensitive areas like Ring Mountain and Bothin Marsh.

The district is currently looking into revising its road and trails management plan, which could mean changes to existing dog leash laws.

Most of the massive watershed falls within the boundary of the Mt. Tamalpais State Game Refuge and is governed by California Department of Fish and Game Dogs laws. That means that dogs are permitted on district lands only when restrained by a leash and under the control of the owner.

This Patch Primer is meant to be a working document and we’ll update it as agencies change their own regulations. If we’ve missed an agency or open space area, let us know in the comments box and we’ll look into it.