With warmer weather recently and many feeling cooped up inside, more people have taken to City parks with their pets—sometimes flouting leash laws that are designed to keep people and their pets safe.

The FAS At Your Service Blog recently sat down with Kevin Mack, Animal Control Officer II with the Seattle Animal Shelter, to get a better understanding of leash laws, why they matter and how they protect more than just us and our pets.

Mack advises that, while leash laws should always be adhered to, they are especially important now as we’ve entered prime fledgling season. Songbirds, herons and other birds often build their nests on the ground, including in many City parks. These nests, baby birds and other small mammals are vulnerable to pets that aren’t properly leashed in on-leash parks.

Leash laws are intended to not only protect birds and small animals in their natural habitat, they’re also there to help protect pets, their owners and people they encounter in parks.

“The main reason we have leash laws is for public safety. A lot of bite incidences we address start with someone disobeying the leash law,” Mack said. “Often a dog may bite someone else or someone else’s dog, and that dog might even be on leash but is reactive to a dog that’s off-leash and approaches.”

And, while there’s no current evidence to suggest that animals can transmit COVID-19 to a human, Mack said the pandemic makes it all the more important to adhere to the leash laws because pets could potentially carry and pass the virus on their leashes, collars or other surfaces if those items were exposed. It also makes social distancing harder. Social distancing applies to our pets as well!

“If an aggressive interaction occurs between two animals, the first thing people will do is run in to stop that and they’ll likely be within six-feet of each other,” Mack said. “You yourself may be a carrier and not know it. By letting an animal out of your control, you could be behaving in a way that transmits. We don’t want to find out that’s possible by having it happen.”

Mack said he understands that pet owners have the best of intentions when they let their animals loose. They want them to experience getting to play and run. He just encourages pet owners to follow leash laws and let their furry friends run free in designated off-leash parks.

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Picture courtesy of Kevin Mack, Animal Control Officer II with the Seattle Animal Shelter. The photo is of his cat Emmett, while on one of his on-leash adventures in Kevin’s yard.