Off-leash dog laws vs reality
Hello everyone. I’ve been living in Van for a few years now but haven’t thought about dog ownership until very recently. I moved here from a country where most people don’t leash their dogs so I wasn’t surprised about it here either. I’ve definitely seen all these warning signs at parks but thought that there must be something I’m not understanding. Like right now I’m at this park just off Broadway in Mount Pleasant and there are at least a dozen dogs here and all of them are running around freely and there are lots of people in the park.
I’ve done some searching and as far as I understand it’s illegal in pretty much all parks aside from some super small fenced off areas here in East Van. Do all those people just don’t care and nobody enforces the laws? Also it seems a lot of people on Reddit are very upset about this.
My question is also what’s the point in getting a dog here if it cannot get any exercise or fun unless you go out of your way to drive out of East Van to one of those bigger off-leash parks? All the ones nearby are tiny. and I think there are none in Mount Pleasant. But it seems people just don’t care and let their dogs run free or play fetch in pretty much every park I go to. So if you want to follow the rules your dog will be always leashed by your side at all times. Is that correct?