Kyla Duffy

It was a good day. We had arrived in San Diego safely, the sun was shining, I had a few hours before I had to meet the woman who was renting me a room in her home for $45 a night (a steal for a safe place that accommodates two dog), and I was being welcomed into town by the sweet smell of donuts. Life was good, but for the dogs, it was about to get even better. It turns out that about a mile away from where I was parked was a place called Fiesta Island. My dogfriendly.com app told me it was a dog park, but it seemed too good to be true – it was huge and surrounded by ocean inlets. I thought, “There must be a catch.”

We drove over to Fiesta Island and were greeted by the most awesome dog park EVER. There was no catch – this place was just great. It was exactly what Boulder off-leash areas have failed miserably to be: a warm, fuzzy, accommodating place to go and enjoy dog happiness. You see, Boulder, in its quest to be extremely dog-friendly, has become dog-German. I don’t know a better way to put it. There are just rules upon rules, and even the best dog owners (oops – guardians – that’s what you have to call yourself in Boulder – another rule) feel as though they are perpetually in the wrong. In Boulder, you have to leash your dog whenever you approach a trail. You can’t have more than three dogs with you, and if you have three, one must be on leash. The two who are allowed off leash must be WEARING these big, dangly green tags that you must go online and pay $15 for. Supposedly your $15 guarantees that your dogs know to come when called. Uh, yeah. The dogs must stay on trail, even though many trails are bordered by the dog equivalent of “Wack-a-Mole”… prairie dog land! How could any dog resist? But resist they must, or their guardians could be fined up to $1,000. (If you ask me, guardians should receive $5 for each prairie dog they bring back. They’re frickin’ rodents that carry the plague, for God’s sake!) The ridiculous rules don’t just end with trails. At our dog park, the authorities  once removed all of the plastic chairs people had donated because, it turns out, plastic chairs are “dangerous.” Apparently, though, having a faulty gate that flings itself open at the slightest gust of wind is not dangerous, nor is having a drainage system that floods the small dog park whenever it rains.

I digress… The Fiesta Beach dog park is about a two-mile walk surrounded by water with infinite trails criss-crossing it’s interior space. There are shrubs on which to pee, pipes in which to peer, and waves in which to splash. The people are all very nice, and the dogs are friendly and playful. On the weekend, there may be 200 dogs there at a time, yet it still doesn’t seem that crowded. Bill and Hillary were in heaven!