Walking With Your Dog
The countryside is a working landscape, and your actions can affect livelihoods, our heritage, and the safety and welfare of people and animals. If you take your dog into the countryside, it is important to keep it under proper control and to clean up after it.
Some steps to worry-free ‘walkies’:
- by law, you must control your dog so that it does not scare, worry or disturb farm animals or wildlife such as ground nesting birds (whose young will soon die without protection from their parents).
On most areas of open country and common land, you should keep your dog on a short lead between 1 March and 31 July - and all year round near farm animals. - you do not have to put your dog on a lead on public paths, as long as it is under close control. But as a general rule, keep your dog on a lead if you cannot rely on its obedience. However, on Dartmoor you can also help by having your dog on a lead during the lambing season on enclosed farmland (1 December - 31 July). By law, farmers are entitled to shoot a dog that injures or worries their animals.
- if a farm animal chases you and your dog, it is safer to let your dog off the lead - don’t risk getting hurt by trying to protect it.
- everyone knows how unpleasant dog mess is and it can cause infections, so always clean up after your dog and get rid of the mess responsibly. Also, make sure your dog is wormed regularly to protect it, other animals and people.
- at certain times, dogs may not be allowed on some areas of access land or may need to be kept on a lead. Please follow any official signs.
Wherever you go, following these steps will help keep your pet safe, protect the environment, and show you are a responsible dog owner.
You may find out more about walking your dog in the countryside from www.countrysideaccess.gov.uk (external link, opens new window) by e-mailing openaccess@countryside.gov.uk or by calling 0845 100 3298; or pick up the leaflet You and your dog in the countryside produced by the Countryside Agency, English Nature and the Kennel Club from which the six steps to worry free ‘walkies’ guidelines have been extracted.
Page updated 10 January 2006
