Updated April 2026

Public data on Seattle's off-leash dog area system.

Supply, access, enforcement, and peer-city comparison. Compiled from Seattle Parks & Recreation, the Seattle Park District, Trust for Public Land ParkScore, Washington OFM, and public records requests.

OLAs in Seattle, 2025
14
Fully-fenced, dedicated off-leash areas
OLAs opening fall 2026
+2
West Seattle Stadium, Othello Playground
Dog parks per 100K residents
1.82
Portland: 5.74 · SF: 5.03 · Vancouver BC: 5.44
Off-leash citations, 2014–2019
4,803
SPR Animal Control, via public records request

Reports

Part I

The Gap

Seattle's OLA count has been stuck at 14 for ~15 years while the population grew 34%. Per-capita comparison to Portland, San Francisco, Vancouver BC, and Austin. Budget analysis through Park District Cycle 2.

Read Part I →
Part II

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.

Read Part II →
Enforcement

Hotspots

Where Seattle Animal Control issued 4,803 off-leash citations between January 2014 and October 2019. Interactive hotspot map, year trend, and a top-20 table — six of the top ten cited parks have no designated OLA at all. A follow-up public records request covering October 2019 to present has been filed; this page will update when received.

Read the enforcement analysis →
Budget

Where the money goes

Seattle Parks & Recreation 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.

Read the budget analysis →
Editorial

Opinion & recommendation

A clearly-marked 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. Signed by Andre Vrignaud.

Read the editorial →

Primary data

All underlying data lives in the GitHub repo under /data. Plain CSVs; no database, no build step, no login.

Methodology & caveats

This site favors explicit methodology over headline-friendly numbers. Every derived number on every page 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:

Corrections and contributions welcome This site deliberately flags where the underlying data is incomplete, approximate, or stale. If you spot an error, have a better primary source, or can fill in one of the known data gaps — especially around current dog-population counts, SPR's internal methodology, or per-OLA usage observations — please get in touch at [email protected] or file an issue on the repo. The site will be updated.