When done right, dog parks are beneficial

WASHINGTON — Whether the tabloid take is "Dogs Unleashed on Parks!" or "Fido Finally Gets to Play!," advocates from both ends of the spectrum would undoubtedly agree: The issue of free-running canines in public open spaces has become a permanent fixture in local park planning debates.

Dogs have always played a big role in city parks, but their traditional position at the end of a lead has been upended by changing mores and a rising enthusiasm among dog owners for much more active play.

There are now more than 700 dog parks in the United States, ranging from substantial corners of large green spaces to small parks entirely devoted to unleashed canines — and the number is growing.

Beginning with a 1979 experimental dog park in Berkeley, Calif., the issue has provoked raucous local public hearings that sometimes run well past midnight.

While the issue has divided some cities, it's unified others — sometimes even bolstering the general park constituency as a whole, dogs aside.

The key to success, it seems, is all in a community's approach. The efforts of several prominent dog-park communities provide useful examples of what works and what doesn't.

Of all the clashes, none is as brutal as San Francisco's, a city with multiple park agencies and about as many dogs as children. In the 1970s, an off-leash culture began on some of the remote San Francisco beaches operated by the National Park Service.

The activity was illegal but tolerated until park naturalists realized that the populations of two threatened beach birds, the snowy plover and the bank swallow, were dropping rapidly — probably due to the dogs.

When police began enforcing the leash law, owners shifted to smaller, more centrally located neighborhood parks run by the city park department — provoking an outcry from mothers of small children and others who didn't want to pick up droppings every time they spread out a picnic blanket.

Soon, almost every park became a battleground. Both sides dug in, egged on by the media and grandstanding politicians. The Park Service eventually brought in mediators to lead a "negotiated rulemaking process," but an amicable solution still seems years away.

In contrast, Seattle made the civic transition with relative ease. Hit by the off-leash trend in the early 1990s, the city initially took a hard-line approach, adding more animal control officers and increasing the number of citations. Concerned dog owners formed Citizens for Off-Leash Areas (COLA) and caught the attention of a city council member.