It makes me happy to see a dog running through the woods, in a field or on the beach. Few thing make dogs happier than the chance to run free, to make choices, and to move at their own pace. Many dogs would likely choose this as their treat of choice if only they knew that it existed and was a possibility.

Safety concerns as well as leash laws severely limit many dogs’ opportunities to run off leash. It would be wonderful if everyone had acres and acres of fenced land for their dogs to enjoy, but in most communities, there is a shortage of places that dogs are legally allowed to be off leash. Dog parks are a mixed bag, and while they allow off leash opportunities, they are certainly not right for every dog. It’s a big challenge for most guardians to find a way to let their dogs run unencumbered and unrestrained. It’s a shame, too, because it’s so good for dogs to be able to run without being physically attached to a person.

I’m not opposed to leashes, by the way. In fact, I’m a huge fan of them. They protect dogs from cars, from running away and becoming lost and from misbehaving in ways that get them into real trouble. As much as I believe that dogs can benefit from running off leash, it often makes me nervous to see dogs enjoying their freedom near roads or at parks full of children.

Dogs should only have as much freedom as they can handle, and that varies from dog to dog. A dog that won’t run away, always comes when called, is polite and social with people and other dogs, and would never chase cars or bikes can obviously safely be off leash in a lot more situations than dogs who don’t share these qualities. Some dogs can be off leash anywhere that it’s allowed without a problem. Other dogs are more limited, but an off leash romp in the right situation is still a ticket to happiness.

How often does your dog have the chance to run off leash, and where can you go to do this safely?

Ever wonder how a professional athlete handles the pressure of competition and a grueling 6-month long schedule? For burgeoning NBA star Klay Thompson of the Golden State Warriors, it’s a walk in the park … the dog park. When Klay isn’t in the gym or on the road, he likes to take his dog Rocco, an English bulldog, to his local off-leash area at Cesar Chavez Park in nearby Berkeley (CA). We’ve seen him there, playing fetch and doing what dog people do … unwinding, taking in some fresh air. “With me, my friends or my family, I can’t help but talk about basketball, so this is my escape,” Thompson is quoted in a San Francisco Chronicle profile.

ESPN analyst and hall-of-fame player Charles Barkley calls the 6 ft 9 Thompson the best NBA player at his position—strong praise. Thompson’s team, the Golden State Warriors, apparently agrees, recently resigning their star shooting guard to a multi-year, $70 million contract. What was Thompson’s response at the post-signing press conference? “We were trying to get the contract signed, and all he wanted to do was go home to his dog,” mused Warrior general manager Bob Myers.

We know the joys firsthand of Cesar Chavez Park OLA, it’s where the idea for The Bark was born. In fact, the 17-acre OLA overlooking the San Francisco Bay was founded by Bark co-founder Claudia Kawczynska in 2000. One of the founding dogs was Claudia’s dog Nellie … named after former Warrior coach Don Nelson. A bit of history we think Klay Thompson would appreciate.

Francoise Mira of California will never forget the day advanced obedience skills saved the life of her beloved mixed-breed dog Leilah. She had been hiking with Leilah and her Australian Shepherd, Copper, in a canyon near her home. On weekends, the area was closed off to automobile traffic, making it safe for off-leash dogs.

“All of a sudden, I heard a car coming, illegally off-roading,” says Mira. “I called Copper to me but Leilah was on the other side of the road. I told him to sit and at the same time, I gave the down-stay visual signal to Leilah and she dropped [to the ground]. Because I was able to give her that Utility down signal, a hand signal, I was able to have them both stay still and let this car go through.”

In competition, obedience at its best can look like magic. With every nod of the handler’s head or sweep of her arm, the dog responds with an enthusiastic burst of motion or a quick halt or down. Dog and handler glide together in perfect sync as the judge calls out instructions, and the small crowd gathered outside the ring quietly admires their performance. At the conclusion of the class, the judge announces which teams qualified, and to those pairs he hands out the placement ribbons, as the audience applauds and the dogs’ tails wag.

“Obedience builds confidence in the dog,” says Kate Cowles of Iowa, who competes with four shelter dogs in UKC obedience, St. Hubert’s Companion Dog Sports Program and the Association of Pet Dog Trainers’ Rally O. “For me, the point of doing competitive obedience is to build the bond.”

At its worst, competitive obedience can look like torture for both partners. Some handlers constantly jerk at their dog’s leash or practically drag the poor thing around the ring. Other handlers become so nervous about the trial setting that they pass on that stress to their dogs, who constantly lick their lips and look for a chance to bolt.

If this is your idea of obedience, then it certainly does not conjure up images of fun with your dog. But for many people nationwide, it is a favorite pastime, and their dogs enjoy the extra attention, travel and overall excitement. Perhaps if it were called something more flashy, like “precision teamwork” or “synchronized stepping,” more dog-lovers would pursue this challenging sport and discover its many benefits.

The Basics
At its most basic, obedience comprises a variety of exercises that demonstrate controlled communication between handler and dog. Depending on the level, required skills can include sit, down, stand for exam, recall, heel, retrieve, jump and scent. The degree of difficulty increases as you progress from one class to the next, known as Novice, Open and Utility in most venues.

Modern obedience in North America derives from exercises created by the world’s first Working Trial society, the Associated Sheep, Police and Army Dog Society of England. The society hosted its first Working Trial in 1924 as a practical test of each dog’s knowledge in three areas: control, agility (over varied terrain) and scent work.

Helene Whitehouse Walker is widely regarded as the founder of American obedience. In 1933, she adapted the society’s exercises to hold her own test in New York to prove the intelligence of her Standard Poodles. In 1937, Walker and her assistant, Blanche Saunders, promoted the young sport by taking their dogs on the road for a nationwide traveling obedience exhibition.

Today, the society’s three fundamental applications can still be found at an obedience trial, no matter what the venue. Control is exhibited at all levels of obedience, especially through heeling and the dog’s response to the handler’s verbal commands or, as they progress as a team, silent hand signals. Agility is demonstrated at the Open level by asking the dog to jump over a panel jump, broad jump and bar jump. Lastly, scent work is found at the highest level, Utility, in which the dog must find an object with his handler’s scent among a pile of articles and return with the correct one.

The American Kennel Club (AKC) is perhaps the largest and most well-known venue for obedience. Though it currently only allows purebred dogs, the AKC Board of Directors is considering a listing service that would allow mixed breeds to participate in obedience, rally, agility and tracking. All dogs, including mixed breeds, are welcome to participate in obedience programs through the American Mixed Breed Obedience Registry (AMBOR), the Australian Shepherd Club of America (ASCA), St. Hubert’s Companion Dog Sports Program and the United Kennel Club (UKC).

UKC obedience competitor Ray Czubek of Illinois recently retired his mixed breed, J.D., one of only three dogs to earn her AMBOR Obedience Trial Championship. Having competed in both UKC with J.D. and in AKC with German Shepherds, Czubek finds the former to be more relaxing and family-oriented. But no matter where he participates, it’s working together with his dog that counts. “Most people are instant-gratification-oriented,” says Czubek. “I like the precision teamwork, and find it challenging to keep my dog motivated. You have to make the effort.”

Evolving Methods
At its earliest stages and well into the 1970s, dogs were taught obedience using punishment-avoidance techniques such as the “jerk and pull” method. People believed that if the dog experienced a negative consequence for not doing what was asked, that would be enough to create the preferred behavior. This worked for some dogs, though not all. Obedience training pioneer Terri Arnold of Massachusetts, who has earned multiple Obedience Trial Championships (OTCh) in AKC over more than 30 years, was one of the first to question and improve upon traditional training methods.

In the 1970s, when Arnold started training a Shetland Sheepdog, she soon realized that choke collars, harsh commands, and withholding praise or play would not work. But, she discovered, food was an excellent motivator, and she asked her trainer if she could bring some to class. He told her no. Her Sheltie performed wonderfully and happily at home with the food, but was miserable without it in class.

“I decided to sneak food into class, and it fell on the floor from her mouth,” says Arnold. “The instructor started screaming at me in front of the class, and I said, ‘I don’t need this anymore.’ I turned around and walked away. I knew there had to be a better way. I will never forget that day as long as I live. It was a turning point in my whole life.”

The introduction of operant conditioning and clicker training to competitive obedience over the past 10 years has fostered a growing movement toward more positive and motivational instruction. In his book Clicker Training for Obedience, Morgan Spector explains how operant conditioning and the use of the clicker can shape behaviors that, together, combine into a complete obedience exercise. Dogs learn step by step instead of being expected to learn an entire skill set all at once.

The Birth of Rally-O
For someone who has never shown a dog before, the formality of competitive obedience can be intimidating. With that in mind, the AKC and the Association of Pet Dog Trainers (APDT) now offer Rally-O, a more fast-paced version of traditional obedience exercises, which takes place in a relaxed, though still competitive, setting. The judge creates a course in which the handler and dog follow numbered signs and perform the exercise described at each station. Rather than standing stiff and silent, handlers may use their upper bodies and talk to their dogs for encouragement.

“I love Rally,” says Certified Pet Dog Trainer Diane Lavigne of New York. “I think it’s a great way for a dog to get ring experience without going into the Novice [Obedience] ring. The exercises are based on what you need to do to get a Novice title.” Lavigne also competes in UKC and AMBOR obedience with her mixed breed Hershey, AKC obedience with her Golden Retriever Skye, and is training her young Golden, Eagle, for his competition debut. In December 2005, Hershey was ranked third in the nation by AMBOR for UKC Novice Obedience.

Added Value
If you take the time to find an instructor with whom you feel comfortable, you and your dog will enjoy obedience, rally or both. “As long as the training is not abusive, the benefits of training are immense,” says Lori Waters, whose pack includes AKC Obedience Trial Champion German Shepherd Lou, and Border Collie Mitch, who was the first dog in AKC history to earn Conformation Champion, Obedience Trial Champion and Champion Tracker titles. “Spending time together, and learning to communicate with each other strengthens the dog–handler bond like nothing else can. After spending thousands of hours training, traveling thousands of miles showing—not to mention spending thousands of dollars—with my dogs, the way you both grow together is unbelievable. Your dog gets the attention and goes places that other dogs can only dream about. They get to live a very full life and the handler gets to share it.”

Even if you’re not interested in competition, obedience training has value. “Obedience doesn’t benefit the dog,” says Arnold. “The obedient dog benefits, because then the dog can have a good life, a chance to run free and be a dog, whether it’s in a dog park or out in the woods somewhere. It’s the most amazing thing to me, people who let dogs free that they can’t control. Love is taking the time to train the dog to keep it safe.”

This is a follow-up article to our political primer on dog park campaigning. We hope that you found some of the information helpful and that you are now ready to sit down with town planners and design that perfect dog park.

Let’s start by suggesting a different term for dog park. We know it’s an easy term to use, but it often evokes irate comments like: “What do you mean you want to spend my taxes on a bunch of dogs?”; “What about safe playground equipment for my kids?”; “Drinking fountains for dogs, you gotta be kidding!” Play it safe—try using terms like “off-leash” or “multi-use area,” stressing the human component at all times. The acronym-clever COLA people (Citizens for Off-Leash Areas in Seattle simply call theirs OLAs (a convention we’ll adopt here). In Berkeley, “multi-use area” refers to the multiple legitimate uses, including our leashless dogs, that are allowable in sections of the park. In Indianapolis they refer to their recently inaugurated area as a Canine Companion Zone.

In doing the research for this article and in talking with many of you who have contacted us for more information or to share your wisdom and experience, we realize that this material cannot be easily condensed into just two parts. So we will be turning this into a regular feature, with future reports including case studies from your parks.

A recap from last time: because most cities have leash laws that outlaw dogs running “at large,” you’ll need to change this policy.

But few policymakers or administrators are risk-takers; they’ll need reassurances that they are not the first to be confronted by a citizenry asking to use public land to recreate with a pack of off-leash dogs. This is to be followed by gentle and constant reminders that your request isn’t coming out of left field and you have the numbers to support your proposal (with signed petitions in hand), that you do pay taxes supporting everyone else’s recreational activity and, lastly, that you regularly consult with your dogs before voting. By doing most of your homework online you can find many excellent examples of successful programs (see resources) to bring to your town’s decision-makers. Now that you have piqued their interest, the next step is to lead them to the drawing table with design guidelines and planning criteria.

Guidelines can help move the process along but keep in mind that, as Mencken noted: “For every complex, difficult problem, there is a simple, easy solution … and it is wrong.” One of the first things we learned in gathering this information is that while it is tempting to use guidelines from other cities or even from other parks within the same city, they should be used judicially and only as outlines to help shape the planning process and not as across-the-board standards. As Judy Green, a veteran of off-leash planning in Virginia, cautioned, “it is important to remain as flexible as possible,” leaving room for “fine-tuning afterwards.” Site-specific and community-specific needs must be addressed. A fifty-acre area within a five-hundred acre park might be too small for one city, but in a dense urban area like New York it could be positively palatine.

It is beyond the scope of this space to write about macro-level planning issues or site analyses—we all know that a city should provide a series of neighborhood parks accessible to the daily needs for all its citizens, including those with dogs, with major municipal or regional parks available for special jaunts. In the ideal world, dogs would be welcomed to share the total park experience with us, as they do in Australia, and not only be limited to permitted sectors. Taking these limitations into consideration, we’ll concentrate on some guidelines for a prototypical off-leash park, if only in the abstract. Operational topics, such as sponsoring groups, user-permits and maintenance issues will be discussed in the next issue.

Size
If your OLA is located on a new site or built within an established park, size is the single most important and probably the most contentious criterion to be decided. Let it be suggested as a rule of thumb that the bigger the better. An off-leash area is similar to a computer: the day you buy one is the day it becomes outdated. With a smaller area (especially if it is the only facility servicing a wide area), you will quickly find that supply can’t match demand. Indianapolis experienced this when permits to their first Canine Companion Zone were sold out almost the day of the opening. They are now looking to open a second, larger canine zone in another park.

Some suggest that the auxiliary (i.e., neighborhood) off-leash parks be a minimum of three to five acres. Even though we agree with the larger end of this range, in many urban areas this is probably unattainable. For smaller parks or for the ones that can’t be easily “divided” into specific usage zones, a “time share” arrangement might be possible, with the park available to dog use in the early mornings and early evening hours. If this is your only option, as it is for many New Yorkers, try to obtain a liberal frame of permitted times (perhaps before 10 a.m. and after 4 p.m.), factoring in seasonal day length changes. The town of Petaluma, north of San Francisco, reports very successful results with a time-share program that is operational in all of its parks.

We disagree with policy papers that suggest that OLAs be restricted to a maximum of five acres. The rationale behind this limit is that a larger area would make monitoring more difficult. But there is abundant and convincing long-term evidence to ameliorate these concerns, coming from larger dog-friendly parks such as Pt. Isabel in Richmond, California (with nearly a million visits a year), Fort Funston in San Francisco, Marymoor Park in Redmond, Washington, Shawnee Mission Park in Johnson County, Kansas, and others. Ideally, OLAs should be large enough not only to accommodate human-with-dog recreational activities, like walking and jogging, but also to provide enough space where some of us can spend private time away from the fetch-and-chase set. Also, the larger the park the less likely that its resources, such as turf, will suffer from overuse.

Fencing
Another bone of possible contention is fencing. In parks close to traffic, fencing—with consideration for aesthetic concerns —might be necessary. In these cases, double entry, self-closing gates are recommended. Unless your dogs are into high hurtling, a four-foot fence should be adequate. Chain-link (vinyl-coated) fencing is probably the least expensive but some parks, as in Sacramento and Dupont Circle in DC, are looking into other alternatives like wrought iron (beware of the pointy pickets). Arlington Dogs’ Judy Green adds that fencing must extend to the ground and that if using chain-link, the bottom must be crimped to avoid injuries to the dogs. In larger multi-use parks, especially in areas away from traffic which have terrain features that provide natural demarcations and barriers away from other park uses, fencing might not be necessary. There are often serious disagreements over fencing. It can be the single most expensive item in the construction of OLAs, so securing the funding can hamper the progress of projects, especially if communities balk about paying for it. Sometimes dog people are asked to contribute to this expense. Putting aside the fairness question—are tennis players asked to pay for the fences on public courts?—some of you have turned into amazingly effective fund-raisers, getting financial assistance from local businesses. Pet stores and pet food companies should be eager to contribute and perhaps even sponsor your park. In some cases, fencing can also help allay fears of liability.

Children
Even though allowing children into OLAs is more of an operational than a design issue, is it usually during the design stage that this issue is addressed. Again bringing up the specter of liability issues, some communities have opted for not allowing children, even those accompanied by an adult, into their OLAs. We think this is unfortunate. It can add fuel to the children versus dog debate, and Judy Green thinks that it “doesn’t serve the dog community to perpetuate this idea that dogs are always to be feared.” Children should obviously be closely supervised in parks from all recreational activities, such as bicycling, inline skating, kite flying, as well as from dogs. Also, many families with dogs cannot afford the luxury of providing quality park time to their dogs, separate from the time they can spend with their children. Most parks do allow children but some take the precaution of noting on their signage that children under a certain age must be accompanied by an adult. Personally, we love seeing young parents with those new sports-model baby strollers wheeling their charges on the paths of the off-leash area with their dogs merrily running alongside. This goes to the essence of what these areas are all about—having a good time in our parks with those we love.

Other design considerations:

• Available parking that will not interfere with or disturb neighbors
• Compliance with American Disabilities Act requirements—service dogs and their companions should be urged to use OLAs
• Buffer Zones from neighbors who might be concerned about barking
• Conveniently-sited, covered trash receptacles and poop disposal product dispensers
• Bulletin boards for posting notices, raising public awareness, announcing training classes, etc.
• Shade trees, good drainage, maintain-able turf
• Water fountains with both human and dog-level spigots
• Clear, concise and aesthetically pleasing signage
• Benches, tables, agility equipment, swimming ponds