Dear Sally

A Dog Owner's Guide To Perfectly Proper Behaviour A keen observer of humans and dogs alike, Sally West is a regular visitor to Point Pleasant Park. Do you have a question about walking in the park with your human?  Send your questions to Contact Us for her consideration.

Most of us like the freedom of being off leash, and Point Pleasant Park is probably the best off-leash park in Canada. My person showed me a map of the kilometers of roads and paths the other day and I realized that there are only two roads which have any restrictions for dogs at all.  Isn't that amazing?

Cambridge Drive from the upper car park to the Martello Tower is on-leash at all times. I believe this is because it is the main entrance to the park and they think that keeping us on our leashes will make sure that our people clean up after us: and it seems to work, Cambridge Drive is one of the cleaner areas of the park.

And, of course, there is an alternative off-leash route for us along Hemlock Way. The only other restriction is that we are not allowed on Sailors Memorial Way from the lower parking lot to Point Pleasant itself after 10 a.m. each day. Again, this is a very heavily used road and I think they are afraid that if too many dogs and people all use it at once, there might be trouble. Everywhere else in the park we can be off our leashes at all times, which is wonderful.

The exciting news is that our people have been working with HRM staff to help them decide which areas in other parks can be made off-leash. They held a special meeting at the end of last year to work out planning principles (whatever they are) for off-leash parks.

They looked at maps of a number of different parks and studied the reasons why some of them could have off-leash areas, and why others would not work. They decided that off-leash parks should be accessible to everyone, affordable, should balance the needs of the dog owning and non-dog owning public, should be clean, should be environmentally and culturally sustainable, and should not destroy the natural beauty of the parks. (I'm just quoting here, principles are a bit above my head.)

This year there has been a series of public meetings at which our people helped to decide how these principles should be applied to parks in HRM. We were not invited to these meetings to bark for ourselves, but although this doesn't seem very democratic, I think most of us have got our people pretty well trained to bark for us.

Now we have to wait and see which other parks will have off-leash areas. Let's hope that everyone involved remembers that we grow old seven times as fast as our people, and try to give us some of these new off-leash areas while we are still young enough to enjoy them. A nice man called John Charles is in charge of the program, so if you meet him, be especially friendly.

     Sally 

PS: Don't forget to make sure that your person cleans up after you. Nothing offends the people who don't own dogs more than a messy park, and nothing is more likely to turn them against allowing us off-leash areas in other parks.