Live life off leash

My dogs absolutely love going to this local dog friendly park. There are many kilometres of shared hiking trails. It is heavily used by dog owners (peak hours see easily 100 dogs there), mountain bikers, and walkers. There are ponds and fields, and the entire park is surrounded by the large North Saskatchewan river. The park is almost like a little peninsula jutting out with the river running around it on all sides except the entrance.

We visit this park several times a month. If I am off on a Monday we almost always go with our agility trainer and her 5 labs, and on the weekends we go early in the morning to avoid the rush. There is nothing that makes the dogs happier than getting to run and play freely, and this park is removed from traffic and large enough that at quieter times you are not constantly surrounded by other dogs and people.

If you have visited us before, you know that I do not necessarily encourage other hound owners to off leash their dogs. The majority of owners do not put in the time and training required to have a reasonably reliable recall (note that there is no such thing as a perfect recall), and as such probably shouldn't be letting their dogs off leash. For our purposes though, with hounds that have good recalls and in locations such as this where there is very low risk of anything bad happening, it is so nice to have dogs that can enjoy life off leash.