Folks in the Bay Area could soon need instruction manuals to own dogs.

The Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which includes some of the Bay Area’s most popular waterfront national parks (including Crissy Field and Fort Funston), is considering a new set of rules for dogs.

A massive federal study – 2,000 pages – is making recommendations on where dogs should be allowed in the parks, if at all. The National Park Service is trying to balance its responsibility to protect nature with the desires of visitors to enjoy the parks.  The plan is now up for public comment and has become a source of controversy – it’s the subject of my column today. 

The Park Service has developed four categories for how dogs behave in the parks. Here are those definitions, along with what I imagine a dog’s reaction would be:

Off-leash play = woof!
On-leash walking = ruff
Banned = grrrrr
Regulated off-leash = ? (ears up, look of consternation)

That last category will be new for most dogs and their owners. Under the proposal, seven areas scattered throughout the parks, including some portions of Crissy Field, would allow so-called Regulated Off-Leash Access for dogs. Within the designated space dogs would be free to romp, but their owners and caretakers would be required to maintain eye contact 100% of the time – and the dogs must be trained to respond to voice commands.

If someone gets distracted by a cell phone call and takes his eyes off Fido, he could be fined. The rule also implies limits on the number of dogs any one person can bring – there’s no way one set of eyes can maintain contact with multiple dogs.

Park Service personnel would staff the areas to make sure the rules are enforced. And such “regulated” activities would be the only type of off-leash play allowed in the parks, and only in the selected zones. Unregulated off-leash play would not be permitted, and most national park land (from Marin to San Mateo counties) would be off limits to dogs, or require dogs to be leashed.

Even the leash rules would be more complicated – there would be limits on how many dogs one person could walk. After all, can one person really keep track of the potty breaks of ten dogs? (That’s how many dogs I witnessed one person wrangling recently out at Fort Funston.)

All these new proposed rules have some dog owners howling, but the Park Service wants people to understand that if the plan becomes law this will be the most lenient dog policy in the entire national parks system.

Out of the nation’s 394 national parks, not one allows any sort of off-leash dog activity, of the regulated kind or any other. The Golden Gate National Recreation Area would be unique, and to hear the Park Service personnel talk about it, it sounds like they practically had to get the equivalent of a Papal dispensation to obtain this much leeway – they had to argue hard to get the Bay Area this special deal.

However, such bureaucratic victories don't impress many dog owners, who have been letting their dogs run free (unregulated) for decades – long before the National Park Service started managing the lands in 1972. Dog owners argue that they were here first, and the new rules represent a loss of freedom.