Off-leash dogs raise concern 

There was only one walking path, making it nearly impossible to avoid them when the larger dog started to approach Lilly. 

“The man had the audacity to say, ‘Oh, my dog is friendly,’” Mameesh said. “The dog comes barreling up to her … grabs her and tries to pick her up and starts shaking her. She was gushing and bleeding and just screaming and wailing in pain.” 

Lilly was taken to the hospital and recovered from her injuries, but it still concerned Mameesh and her husband that the dog owner did not attempt to intervene and was most likely continuing to walk his dog off leash. While her husband was tending to Lilly’s injuries, the man had left the area.

“He knew he was in trouble, so he grabbed his dog and ran,” she said. 

As someone whose job is caring for dogs — often reactive ones —  Mameesh said she understands that some behave more aggressively, or even unpredictably, than others. But she’s seen an increase in the number of owners who don’t think twice about letting their dogs roam off leash, even though it’s prohibited in the vast majority of parks and open spaces in the county. 

“I don’t recall this really being a problem beyond two or three years ago, but recently, it’s happened to me a lot out on walks,” she said. “A lot of the dogs that we walk aren’t the friendliest. That’s why people hire us to take them out for a neighborhood walk on their own, not a pack walk with other dogs. But lately, even in the suburbs of San Carlos or Redwood City, you’ll have dogs and their owners just come running up to you. It’s a little scary.”

Several cities have noticed an increase in complaints regarding off-leash dogs. Over the summer, the city of San Carlos posted on its social media page that it noticed an uptick in complaints and “dog owners not complying” with city rules and laws.  

Complaints are seasonal

Joanne Magrini, Parks and Recreation director for the city of San Mateo, said off-leash dog complaints are more common during summer months when more people are outside and even during the fall with the return of sports leagues.

“It may be because they’re using a sports field that wasn’t used during a certain season and now the players are back and so the teams are calling more frequently,” Magrini said. “It could be because the weather is better. It could be a whole host of things. It just depends, and it’s pretty arbitrary.”

But neither San Carlos nor San Mateo law enforcement have noticed an uptick in reports of dog attacks. The latter saw two reports of dog attacks come through in the last three months, which  involved dogs biting humans, not other animals. The Peninsula Humane Society, which contracts with the county to provide animal control services, said it also has not noticed any increase in dog attack reports. One employee at Sequoia Veterinary Hospital in San Carlos said they have seen a slight increase in dogs coming in with bite wounds in the last several weeks but could not confirm if the increase stems from interactions with other family dogs or pets — which is most common — or other types of attacks, such as coyotes. 

But some residents still maintain that the heightened leash rule violations are leading to more violence against other pets, especially smaller dogs. Ken Castle, a San Carlos resident, said the lack of enforcement by the city and county is perpetuating the situation, effectively condoning off-leash dogs throughout the city. 

Castle has seen and heard about numerous instances of off-leash dog attacks, which have only gotten worse since the pandemic, when more people adopted dogs but couldn’t receive in-person training. But now that in-office mandates are making a comeback and owners are traveling again, many dogs, especially larger ones, are not getting the exercise they need, which often exacerbates agitated behavior — and even more so for those that are untrained. 

What adds insult to injury, he added, is that dog owners are often resistant to putting their pets on leashes when reminded that not doing so is a violation of the trail or park rules. 

Limited staffing

The number of rangers who enforce such rules are limited. San Mateo, one of the most populous cities in the county, only has one to two employees patrolling the city at a given time, responding to a variety of calls, which makes it difficult to respond to incidents as they occur, Magrini said. 

Colleen Crowler, spokesperson at Peninsula Humane Society, said it has a limited number of employees dedicated to patrol and there are not plans to increase staff for patrolling and enforcement in the near future. There are about three to five animal control staff on duty covering the entire county each day, though, like San Mateo, they are not strictly patrolling for off-leash dog violations and are often responding to other urgent calls. They’re also unable to issue citations unless they see the leash violations firsthand. In 2023, PHS staff issued 16 citations related to leash violations and so far in 2024, they have issued eight total.

The violations can range anywhere from $100 to $500, depending on the number of prior offenses. But both Mameesh and Castle said that many residents don’t report off-leash dogs, or even attacks, since they often lead to a dead end and, in many cases, aren’t taken seriously. Mameesh said the police officer was helpful when taking the initial report, but when the case was taken up by Peninsula Humane Society, it didn’t seem to care, she said.

“It just felt like she didn’t want to be on the phone with us, didn’t want to help us and wanted to open and shut it as fast as she could,” Mameesh said. “She said, ‘You have one week to give us the name of the person whose dog this was or we’re shutting your case.’ I don’t know if it’s because they’re understaffed, but that’s a problem.”

Self policing

Mameesh and Castle said residents and neighbors tend to feel deflated from relying on city or council officials to enforce the rules and tend to take matters into their own hands, with many posting on NextDoor to warn other dog owners to beware of certain trails or individuals. In one recent post, one user named Ajay warned individuals about his 9-year-old Maltipoo that was viciously attacked by an off-leash Rottweiler near the College of San Mateo and had to undergo major surgeries.  

Mameesh said she trains her staff to tell off-leash dog owners that their clients’ dogs aren’t friendly, even if they are. 

“No matter if the dog we’re walking is the friendliest dog on Earth or the most reactive dog on Earth, step one is to always call out, ‘Please recall your dog. Our dog is not friendly’ — whether the dog is friendly or not — because I found that if you don’t say that, people are more likely to just ignore you,” she said. “I personally have had short conversations with a few people to remind them, but I really find that most people don’t care and don’t want our opinion, so it’s hard to get through.”

Off-leash dog areas are limited in most cities throughout the county. There are only a couple in San Carlos and San Mateo, and Castle said many small dog owners have stopped taking their dogs there altogether.

“The one in San Carlos, for example, is right next to City Hall and you rarely see people there anymore, because there have been so many encounters, because there’s no control over what size dogs should come in or which dogs should come in,” he said. 

He added he wishes there was more enforcement, so that owners were not only more educated but would face consequences for repeatedly breaking the rules. 

“Why do we have leash laws if nobody’s going to enforce them?” Castle said. “The point was to protect not just dogs but other people and small children as well.”

alyse@smdailyjournal.com

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