'Give us space for our dogs': Vancouver pet owners fight back, and win, against off-leash cuts

On Wednesday, regional district directors voted to pause changes to the leash-optional trails in Metro Vancouver’s Pacific Spirit Regional Park.

Proposed changes included cutting the leash-optional trails down from 65 per cent of the park’s network to 51 per cent as part of a new dog management plan that aimed to come into effect on May 6. The changes were due in part to what Metro Vancouver described as nearly 400 safety incidents between dogs and other park users over five years, and ecological impacts due to feces and trail erosion.

The 860-hectare park located on the west side of Vancouver near the University of British Columbia is used by an estimated four million visitors annually, with about a third of those visiting with a dog, according to Metro Vancouver Regional Parks.

Local dog owners pushed back against the changes with petitions that gathered thousands of signatures and a delegation at Wednesday’s committee meeting that disputed Metro Vancouver’s framing of the issue. 

Local resident Candy Saga laid out several issues, including that the proposed changes undermine a situation that the vast majority of dog owners are satisfied with, that the changes don’t meet Metro Vancouver’s own stated aims, and that the plan’s design flaws actually increase risks rather than mitigate them.

Removing certain trail loops means off-leash dog walkers would become more crowded, and switching a current narrow off-leash trail to an on-leash trail comes with its own problems when dogs pass each other, she said.

“Many dogs who are on-leash become more … reactive because they feel like they’re trapped on their leash and can’t back away,” she said. 

In the end, the directors voted to not proceed with the trail changes and are instead focusing on enhanced signage, education and enforcement. Whether the off-leash areas will come up for review in the future is unclear, and representatives from Metro Vancouver did not return Vancity Lookout’s request for comment by deadline.

Area dog owners are concerned there is still a long way to go when it comes to adequate off-leash spaces and making Vancouver a more dog-friendly city in general.

“Definitely, we're lacking places to just really take our dogs and meet where they can just go and be free and get the exercise that they really need, especially living in the city,” says Kitsilano-based Samantha Wade, a professional dog walker.

She thinks the backlash to the Pacific Spirit changes was because it was one of the few spaces where dogs can be in a natural environment and have space to run.

“Yes, you have a few of these fenced-in dog parks that are popping up, but then they get so congested and they're too busy. And if you've got 15, 20 dogs all in this very small space, it's a bit too much, and you're just asking for trouble, really. So even the dog parks then become not desirable to go to, because it's just chaos,” she says.

The Kitsilano/Point Grey area is especially underserved when it comes to leash-free parks, says Devyani Singh, a local resident who started a petition over the Pacific Spirit changes and is part of an off-leash advocacy group in Kitsilano.

“There are a few bad dog owners, and because of that, you can't take away stuff from 99 per cent of the good dog owners,” she says. “We were going to a local park at 7:30 in the morning to exercise our dogs and they were giving bylaw tickets of like, $150 each. And so we were like, 'You don't give us dog parks, you don't allow us to exercise them before anybody uses a park, and then you take away the only off-leash area, and we pay license fees. That's not fair.”

Though up-to-date numbers are hard to find, a 2016 City of Vancouver survey estimated the number of households with dogs in the city as somewhere between 32,000 and 55,000. The city has also estimated there are approximately 150,000 dogs living in the city, and lists 37 off-leash parks, though in 2023 two new and one renewed off-leash areas were approved by council.

Mayor Ken Sim waded into the controversy on Feb. 2 stating on X that he “stand[s] with Vancouver dog owners” in opposition to the Pacific Spirit park changes. However, according to Vancouver Park Board minutes, three of Sim’s ABC-affiliated commissioners voted against those new off-leash dog parks back in 2023.

Sim did not return Vancity Lookout’s request for comment, but park board commissioner Brennan Bastyovanszky says that at that time he was a member of the mayor’s ABC party, and was instructed by the mayor’s then-chief of staff to vote against the off-leash parks — something he refused to do.

“We said, ‘No, that's not how it works.’ So we pushed back,” he says. “Our role as commissioners is park development, and one of the desperate needs in the city was off-leash areas. Off-leash areas are very widely liked because they separate dogs from other park users. And so the parks that were chosen followed public engagement assessment of where the needs were and which parks were appropriate.”

Since the pandemic, there’s been a “huge increase” in dog ownership among Vancouver residents, he adds, and as a commissioner he says they work closely with the community to understand what works and what doesn’t. One example is in the newly revamped General Brock and Emery Barnes parks, where they’ve created separate areas for larger boisterous dogs and quieter and shyer dogs.

“The early feedback we've had from both user groups is that they like that. Even within the dog community, we've been able to find ways to give both groups access to off-leash areas,” he says.

Singh agrees, and says the solutions to these issues are fairly simple.

“It's like 0.002 per cent of all incidents in the park are bad incidents. You have more car road accidents and fatalities. We don't go about banning cars because it's unsafe. We educate, we take other measures,” she says. 

Some of those measures include encouraging dog owners to be more responsible via licensing and enforcement, and allowing dogs to be off-leash in neighbourhood parks during non-peak times.

“Give us a couple parks in every neighbourhood before 9 a.m. where we are allowed to exercise our dogs before work,” she says. “We’ve got to do something. The city won't be the city I love anymore if this is how it continues.”

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