Pet Owners Set to Unleash Lobbying for Dog Park Plan

This park has gone to the dogs.

That’s what many Westside pet owners are hoping as they get ready to lobby next week for a so-called “dog off-leash park” in Venice.

Backers of a park where dogs can run free will meet with opponents of the plan at a community meeting Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Westminster Senior Citizen Center, a possible site for the canine exercise area.

Jeff Prang, press deputy to Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, said Galanter supports the idea but would like to see it implemented somewhere else.

“We are not willing to trade a seniors center for a dog park,” Prang said.

A city ordinance prohibits dogs without leashes in public areas, but there are two places, one in Laurel Canyon and in the other in the Silver Lake district, where dogs are allowed to roam free.

The demand for a new off-leash area was heightened by a change in police policy, said an animal activist.

“It was never legal for dogs to run free on the beach, but the law was never enforced before 8 a.m. and after sunset at Venice- and Marina del Rey-area beaches,” said Daryl Barnett, a member of Freeplay, an alliance of animal activists.

But Barnett said that in February, police began enforcing the law, issuing $77 tickets to owners of dogs without leashes on the beach.