Share of Seattleites within a 10-minute walk of a legal off-leash area. 99% live that close to a park of any kind.
Seattle has one of America's best park systems. For dogs, it's one of the worst. This site is a sourced, reproducible public-data reference — every number links back to where it came from. The opinion page is clearly marked; everything else is factual. Prefer it on paper? Download the full PDF.
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July 2026 · Full-site accuracy pass — survey figure corrected and sourced, Magnuson stewardship reframed
A site-wide review re-checked every load-bearing number against its primary source. The off-leash survey figure is now a blended ~38% (from the 2015 SPR owner survey, its source now committed to the repo), and Part III’s Magnuson case study is reframed — its volunteer steward group (MOLG) has gone dormant, so current stewardship centers on COLA.
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June 2026 · Animal Control Officer (ACO) staffing agreements received — funded for three since 2023, re-priced in 2026
Records requests returned the Seattle Parks & Recreation (SPR) / Animal Shelter Memoranda of Agreement (MOAs). The park-patrol program was funded for three officers back in 2023 ($454,652/yr) — earlier than the April 2026 “more paw patrols” headlines — and a 2026 MOA re-prices the same three-officer plan to $528,279/yr. But the added positions sat largely vacant: as of April 2026 only one of the three positions was filled, so the hiring now underway fills already-budgeted slots rather than adding scope. The records also show officers can't compel an ID or detain, so most contacts end in a verbal warning. Opinion O1 updated.
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June 2026 · Resident complaints & dog-licensing data added
Two new records releases. Find-It-Fix-It (Seattle's report-a-problem app) “Nuisance Dogs in a Park” complaints (C263990) — ~3,010 in 2025, far outpacing citations — drive a new Enforcement finding. And 2014–2025 dog-license counts and revenue (C264029) anchor a new licensing/compliance finding on The Gap (most Seattle dogs are unlicensed, and the share is falling) and a license-revenue-vs-OLA-spending contrast on Budget.
The reports, in short.
Seven sections covering the OLA system: counts, access, what's working, enforcement, budget, peer-city comparisons, and the author's opinion. The first six are factual; the last is opinion. Sources and scripts are linked throughout.
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Part I — The Gap. Seattle has added zero net dog parks since 2009 (two open fall 2026). The city's population grew 34% over the same window. Per-capita, Seattle runs at one-third of Portland and San Francisco's OLA density.
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Part II — Access. 11.7% of Seattleites are within a 10-minute walk of an OLA. (the Trust for Public Land [TPL] says 99% are within a 10-minute walk of any park.) Seven of 14 OLAs are below the American Kennel Club (AKC) 1-acre minimum. 2 of 14 have lighting; 5 have small-dog areas; water access varies by site.
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Part III — Forward. Three questions worth pressing on: which of Seattle's existing OLAs actually function well and why, what shared-use looks like in cities that have run it for decades, and which public lands outside Seattle Parks & Recreation (SPR) — WSDOT right-of-way, Seattle City Light corridors, Port of Seattle property — could host off-leash space without a new Park District dollar.
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Enforcement. 7,015 off-leash citations (2014–2026). Six of the top ten cited parks have zero designated OLA. The empirical pattern: citations cluster where OLAs aren't, or where the OLA that exists is below the AKC 1-acre minimum.
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Budget. SPR's reported budget grew from $168M (2018, operating only) to $507M proposed (2026, all funds) — about half the apparent jump is a 2019 reporting shift, not real growth. The disclosed dedicated-OLA line peaked at 0.064% of SPR's total in 2016 ($100,000 of $156M); SPR has disclosed $126,000 (2023) and $129,000 (2024) since, but no separate OLA-only figure for 2025–2026.
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Peer Cities. Per-city detail on how eight peers — Portland, San Francisco, Vancouver BC, Washington DC, Minneapolis, New York, Austin, and Boise — actually run their off-leash systems. Counting methodology, governance, funding, operating rules, and at least one design choice per city that Seattle hasn't tried.
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Opinion & Recommendation. Author's policy recommendation: a time-zoned shared-use model for existing parks (NYC-style off-leash hours), with enforcement redirected to clean-park compliance.
All the reports.
The Gap
Seattle's OLA count has been stuck at 14 since 2009 — 17 years — while the population grew 34%. Per-capita comparison to Portland, San Francisco, Vancouver BC, and Austin. Budget analysis through Park District Cycle 2.
Access
Walkshed coverage, peer-city OLA acreage, the Kinnear Park case study, and the pattern of illegal off-leash use that follows from insufficient supply. Interactive map of all existing, under-construction, and planned OLAs.
Forward
What works and what Seattle hasn't tried: which existing OLAs actually function well and why, how cities with decades of shared-use experience run it, and the non-SPR public land (WSDOT right-of-way, Seattle City Light corridors, Port of Seattle) that could host off-leash space.
Hotspots
Where Seattle Animal Control issued 7,015 off-leash citations between January 2014 and April 2026. Output rose roughly seven-fold to a 2018 peak after the SPR / Finance & Administrative Services (FAS) patrol program went full-time in 2016, then fell and never recovered — with no published follow-up behavior survey showing whether violations changed. Six of the top ten cited parks have no designated OLA. Interactive hotspot map and top-20 table.
Where the money goes
SPR total budget versus dedicated off-leash area spending, 2016–2026. Absolute dollars, percentages, per-dog figures, Cycle 1 vs. Cycle 2 comparison, and a peer-city transparency table showing why the comparison is so difficult. Every row sourced.
How other cities do this
Per-city detail on eight peers — Portland, San Francisco, Vancouver BC, Washington DC, Minneapolis, New York, Austin, and Boise. Counting methodology, governance, funding mechanism, operating rules, and at least one design choice per city Seattle has not tried.
Opinion & recommendation
An opinion page with six principles, three opinions that fall out of the data, and one policy recommendation: a time-zoned shared-use model for Seattle's parks, modeled on New York City's long-standing off-leash-hours policy.
Primary data.
All underlying data lives in the GitHub repo under /data. Plain CSVs; no database, no build step, no login required. Download any file, run your own numbers, and tell us if we got something wrong.
- seattle-olas.csv14 existing OLAs
- seattle-timeseries.csvpopulation / budget / OLA count, 2010–2026
- peer-cities.csvPortland, SF, Vancouver BC, Austin, etc.
- planned-olas.csvunder-construction & planning
- kinnear-timeline.csv20-year incident chronology
- enforcement-citations.csv7,015 off-leash citations, SPR PRRs C049204 + C263949
- enforcement-by-park-year.csvcitations aggregated by park & year
- SOURCES.mdprimary sources, cited
Methodology & caveats.
This site favors explicit methodology over headline-friendly numbers. Every finding on the report pages links back to its underlying CSV and, where applicable, to the script that produced it. The master reference is METHODOLOGY.md — the "show your work" index. A few caveats readers should also carry:
- Walkshed (now network-based). Previously a straight-line estimate of ~33% of residents; replaced April 2026 with a proper network-distance analysis: 11.7% of Seattle residents live within a 10-minute walking path of an OLA, computed via
scripts/compute_walkshed.py(osmnx against Seattle's full OSM walk network) andscripts/population_coverage.py(2020 Census block-group overlay, area-weighted). SPR's published 2.5-mile standard covers 76.6%. - Peer-city OLA counts differ in definition. Seattle counts only fully-fenced dedicated OLAs; Portland includes unfenced voice-control areas; Vancouver BC includes time-restricted shared-use areas. Direct comparison requires caveats.
- OLA-specific budget. SPR's Park District "Maintaining Parks & Facilities" line funds both OLAs and P-Patch community gardens and is not broken out. The $100,000/year Cycle 1 figure is OLA-only because SPR stated it publicly; Cycle 2 figures are combined.
- Dog population. Triangulated from three independent sources: ~26,700 active dog licenses (Seattle Open Data, hard floor implying ~90–135,000 actual), an AVMA-derived demographic estimate of ~248,900, and the SPR 2023 Expansion Study range of 187,000–400,000. The site uses 150,000 as a conservative floor for per-dog math; see Part I methodology for the full triangulation.