A new guide to dog accessibility at national parks can help people traveling with pets know what to expect at sites across the country. In this episode, we explore concerns, best practices — and a few horror stories to keep in mind — when visiting parks with our furry best friends.
Our pets are family, and when we travel, it only makes sense that we want to bring our dogs with us. Many national park sites are ideal places for our canine companions, with accessible trails and programs geared just for them — but not every site is a good choice for a dog, and many can present serious dangers to our pets.
A new system-wide map and guide to dog accessibility can take some of the mystery out of planning a park trip, and knowing the park regulations and best practices can make trips safer and easier for pet owners and their furry family members. In this episode, host Jennifer Errick speaks with Dr. Ryan Valdez, NPCA senior director for conservation science, and Dave Bieri, district supervisor at New River Gorge National Park, about the range of options for dogs in parks, the National Park Service’s BARK Ranger program, joys and fears of traveling with dogs, and tips for having a safe and enjoyable park trip.
The Secret Lives of Parks is a production of the National Parks Conservation Association.
This episode was produced by Jennifer Errick with help from Todd Christopher, Bev Stanton and Linda Coutant.
Special thanks to Charlie, Beans and Blu, canine companions of NPCA Special Events and Design Director Rachel Holmes and Video Production Manager Terrance Liggins, for providing the barking noises used in this story.
Original theme music by Chad Fischer.
Learn more about Dr. Ryan Valdez’s research project and view his interactive map at npca.org/dogs
Learn more about the National Park Service BARK Ranger program at nps.gov/subjects/pets/
Learn more about this podcast and listen to the rest of our stories at thesecretlivesofparks.org
For more than a century, the National Parks Conservation Association has been protecting and enhancing America’s national parks for present and future generations. With more than 1.6 million members and supporters, NPCA is the nation’s only independent, nonpartisan advocacy organization dedicated to protecting national parks.
And we’re proud of it, too.
You can join the fight to preserve our national parks. Learn more and join us at npca.org
Episode 33
For the Love of Dog
Jennifer Errick: Is it safe to bring dogs to national parks? Unlike our human friends and family, dogs need special attention outdoors, and have their own set of rules to follow that vary from park to park and can be difficult to decipher.
Now, a new guide to dog accessibility can help people know what to expect at every national park. In this episode, we learn about some of the concerns and best practices and a few horror stories to keep in mind when traveling with our furry best friends.
I'm Jennifer Errick, and this is The Secret Lives of Parks.
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Our pets are family, so it only makes sense that when we go on vacations or just pull over for spontaneous hikes on sunny days, we want to bring our dogs with us too. And many national parks are ideal places to bring our canine companions with accessible trails and programs geared just for them.
But not every park is a good choice for a dog. And each site in the National Park system has its own considerations and potential dangers — from poisonous plants to fragile archeological remains to predatory wildlife — so rules about dogs vary greatly from place to place. And until now, there's been no comprehensive resource that pet owners can use to plan national park trips with their dogs, that easily and clearly shows which places are the most accessible and which are more restrictive.
Dr. Ryan Valdez: I am very lucky to live next to a national park that is quite accessible to dogs, and so I have essentially this 200,000 acre backyard to explore.
Jennifer Errick: That's my colleague, Dr. Ryan Valdez, NPCA's senior director for conservation science. He has a background in wildlife ecology and has spent years studying charismatic megafauna around the world. He's also the proud parent of Ennio, a one-year-old English Springer Spaniel.
Ryan lives on the bank of a river near the border of Shenandoah National Park in Virginia with Rob, his partner of nearly 20 years. When they moved in several years ago, Ryan was convinced it was the perfect place to live with a dog, even though Rob had been less enthusiastic about the changes a new family member would bring to their peaceful orderly lives. After a long period of research into different breeds and a few compromises on what sort of dog would work best for their household, Ryan finally won Rob over, and the couple welcomed the floppy-eared black and white puppy into their home.
As the two began adjusting to the needs of their new family member, Ryan had another project to consider. Employees at NPCA become eligible for a paid sabbatical after seven years of full-time work, and last year, Ryan's was on the horizon. He realized he could use his sabbatical to explore his love of parks and his love of dogs by creating a resource on dog accessibility for every national park site in the country.
I met up with Ryan last month at his home near Shenandoah to ask him about this new resource and some of the findings he uncovered in his research. Ennio napped on a blanket in the sun beside us, occasionally stretching and playing with a chew toy while we chatted about the project he inspired.
Just a note about some of the sounds in this episode. Ennio rarely barks, and while his presence is absolutely charming, I found his relative quiet to be inconvenient for an audio story. And so Charlie, a three-year-old mixed breed dog, and Beans and Blu, nine- and five-year-old Chihuahuas, eagerly offered some barking sounds for the story. Thanks, friends.
And now onto the conversation.
Dr. Ryan Valdez: The first year of owning a dog, especially when you get one as a puppy, is very challenging, especially in those first couple of months. You really need a rich experience to bond with the dog and with a partner who doesn't really want the dog. So this happened at the same time that my sabbatical was coming up, and so I thought, well, where can I go where we'll have great experience with Ennio, and of course I always want to go and explore parks, and I had never done the vanlife thing.
It was always on the wish list, but I had reservations about it because it's not the easiest thing to do when you've never done it. You’ve got to put some work into it. But we ultimately decided that's what we're going to do. We're going to jump in a van, a camper van, figure out a loop to the southwest area and back. But in doing research about this, I realized I really didn't know whether these parks that we were tentatively planning to visit would be accessible to Ennio because I couldn't find anything on the park services website other than the park websites directly for each park unit. And I kind of just thought, well, this is very geospatial, being someone who works with maps. And so the idea then came like, why don't I just do this as my sabbatical?
Jennifer Errick: Rob, your partner was less enthusiastic about having a dog. So I want to be clear, because it sounds like he is more enthusiastic about having a dog now. Was that the goal, or was it primarily you want to bond with Ennio and have this time together, and Rob, is like, "That'd be nice," but wasn't necessarily the primary concern?
Dr. Ryan Valdez: It was definitely part of the plan to have that time together, not just me and Ennio, but Rob and Ennio. And Rob loves Ennio very much and they're quite compatible, but I want to say it was maybe subconsciously part of the plan that we would all just bond wonderfully and have this rich experience. But Rob and I both love national parks and wanted to visit a whole lot of other ones we had never seen. And so it's kind of like best of both worlds just came together.
Jennifer Errick: Ryan, Rob, and Ennio spent four weeks visiting 16 parks. When we spoke in early July, Ryan was in the process of collecting data on dog accessibility at the rest of the 400 plus national park sites. He's since completed the research and posted the full project on a color-coded map along with dozens of photos of Ennio at npca.org/dogs. Note that Ryan created the map with input from staff at every park, but it's an independent project that hasn't been officially vetted or endorsed by the park service.
Dr. Ryan Valdez: So if you want to experience parks and you have a dog, there are a lot of good options, but it's hard to know where those are. You have to just start picking up the phone. Not all the websites might have all these resources. You have to do some digging. Technically, every single park unit does allow dogs if they're service dogs.
Jennifer Errick: But that's not most people.
Dr. Ryan Valdez: But that's not most people, and that's a whole different category. It's the rest of it, people that just have their pet dog and want to come to a park. Because some parks actually have activities specifically for dogs, and that would be a lot of fun, but how would you learn about them? Again, you just have to keep going to every park website and start digging around. So I'm hoping that a map can just sort of bring all this information into one place, make it easily accessible, and then just give people a sense of relief that there are a lot of great options to go and enjoy being with your dog in a park.
Jennifer Errick: What were some of your favorite parts of the trip?
Dr. Ryan Valdez: The canoe trip on Buffalo National River was incredible. What a stunning wild river, one of the few wild rivers in the United States now. I thought, oh, this will be fun because Ennio's never been in a canoe. And the water's really clear. You can see the fish and we're on the ends, and he's got his trusty harness with the handle on the back, and on leash, of course. And he did jump in after a fish one time, which he loved doing, and we just pulled him right out. But that park unit is very accessible to dogs, and so that was definitely a highlight.
But also it was just seeing unusual things, like I had never really seen the grasslands of Tallgrass Prairie. I had never been to Great Sand Dunes. The very, very wild nature of Great Smoky Mountains — that one always amazes me because it's so diverse, and it feels like a very ancient forest. Rocky Mountain was beautiful to drive through, but not one that's very accessible to dogs for good reason, a lot of dangerous animals in there and it's bat country, and it's not a place for dogs really.
Jennifer Errick: So you were able to bring him in to some areas, bring Ennio into some areas of Rocky Mountain, but not others?
Dr. Ryan Valdez: Every park unit that we visited, you can take your dogs into the parking areas, around the visitor centers, things like that, but not all parks allow you to take the dog in the park, even in the vehicle in one case, Valles Caldera natural preserve. And I think the issue there was that they had experienced the dog that ran off and started chasing elk, and very problematic for a couple of days. And at that point, I think the superintendent then just didn't want dogs in the car driving into the park because you know they're going to have to go pee and poop at some point, and then they could just run off and-
Jennifer Errick: Right. They're not going to be in the car the entire time.
Dr. Ryan Valdez: Right. You can't guarantee that. But there were great trails around the visitor center there, and we totally respected all the rules, of course, and didn't have any problem. So yeah, some of the parks were just very accessible and some were more restrictive, but I didn't mind at all because all of them I got to take Ennio into.
Jennifer Errick: Did you have any experiences that were scary or confrontational with animals, dogs, people?
Dr. Ryan Valdez: Well, there were, yeah, a couple of times where I was unsure of off-leash dogs that were running around, especially in Great Sand Dunes, and that's a problem.
Jennifer Errick: And against the rules-
Dr. Ryan Valdez: And against the rule.
Jennifer Errick: We should say, the rules-
Dr. Ryan Valdez: It's against park policy.
Jennifer Errick: You need to always, if you're in a park with a dog, have the dog on … a ten-foot leash?
Dr. Ryan Valdez: Six-foot.
Jennifer Errick: Six-foot leash.
Dr. Ryan Valdez: Six foot leash — and be in control of your dog. And there were trails there too that are really dangerous for dogs if step off the trail because it's lined with cacti. And I was nervous because Ennio had never seen a cactus, so he might stick his nose right in it.
But when you get to the line where the dunes start, it's this beautiful, open, vast landscape, and out in front of you are these colossal sand dunes. I mean, what dog wouldn't want to run crazy through this thing, off leash? And so I would say most of the people with dogs were doing that. And you don't know what an off-leash dog is going to do when they see your dog, so we just kept our distance, and we went in there and he absolutely loved it. But it's hard as a dog owner knowing your dog wants to run and you have to stop him from doing that.
Jennifer Errick: It's like being a parent, like any kind of parent, where it's like, "But Dad, but they get to do it."
Dr. Ryan Valdez: And that's something that I think happens, is one person sees another with the off-leash dog and they're like, "Well, it must be okay. I'm going to do it too," and it can escalate. But anytime you leave the vehicle, your dog's got to be on a leash in a park.
It actually is kind of tricky to manage all that all the time. You just want to park, open the door, go get your beverages or whatever, and let the dog run around the car. But in a park, you don't know what your dog's going to do as soon as they jump out of that car. They could see another dog, they could see wildlife, they could just find something interesting and run off. And then you've got all these rangers and other people having to help you find your dog. So it can be a little unnerving sometimes, but most of the time it was terrific.
Jennifer Errick: This rule about keeping dogs on leashes is one of four system-wide regulations that the National Park Service refers to as its BARK program. As you might imagine, Ryan is a fan and was happy to explain it.
Dr. Ryan Valdez: BARK is an acronym, so B being bag the poop. The A is always have your dog on a leash. The R is respect wildlife. And K is know where to go. I think it's a brilliant program. It's good for education and awareness. The idea is that you get the certification. So Ennio's actually got his certificate with his little paw print on it, and he got that from Great Smoky Mountain National Park. He's got this wonderful bandana that they give you with the certificates. So, the idea is you want this thing, right? You want your dog to be a certified BARK Ranger. It's almost like the passport for a dog, if you will, the stamp. How fun is that?
Jennifer Errick: In the course of the trip, were you also talking with park staff about the dog regulations, or was that something you primarily did in the planning stage?
Dr. Ryan Valdez: We did it at every park unit we visited. We talked to rangers. I talked to a lot of dog owners. And I met a lot of dogs on this trip, as you can imagine. And I also wanted to talk to people who didn't have dogs. And I was very surprised, most of the comments revolved around off-leash dogs and safety and stress. Especially if they have kids, you're a parent and you're walking in on a trail, and you've got young kids with you, and here comes an off-leash dog. You don't know what could happen. So, you're just very aware of those things.
Jennifer Errick: What about park service staff, from the resource protection angle?
Dr. Ryan Valdez: Well, I was also surprised that a lot of Park service staff seemed to be a little concerned about dogs in parks because there are a lot of great experiences there for visitors coming with dogs, but they're not going to remember those. They're going to remember the times when there was a problem, and there are a lot of those. It's everything from the poop bags on the trails. I still can't wrap my head around bagging the poop and then leaving it on the trail, but that happens a lot. In fact, it's one of the biggest problems a lot of the parks face with dogs.
Jennifer Errick: So people pick up the poop, put it in a bag, and then put the bag on the trail?
Dr. Ryan Valdez: And then leave it on the trail. Yes.
Jennifer Errick: So, they're not just littering the poop, they're littering the plastic?
Dr. Ryan Valdez: I really tried to find people with dogs to see if some of them may have done that because I didn't want to jump to, "That's a ridiculous thing, why would you do it?" I did talk to somebody who said that he had done that deliberately because on the way out he was going to pick it up. I thought, well, okay, you don't want to carry the poop, I got that. But you're probably not going to see it on the way out. You are leaving it for someone else to step on or you're essentially littering. So I can't quite understand it, but the instinct to bag poop for a dog owner is quite common, especially if you live in the city. Now in a park, you're supposed to do that, but you're supposed to take it out with you.
Jennifer Errick: If you're in the city doing that, you don't then just toss the bag of on the sidewalk.
Dr. Ryan Valdez: Well, there are no garbage cans on these trails to throw your poop. And I talked to one staff member that had this as a major problem in the park with dog bags, and he said that they tried to put receptacles, but then it became a staff problem because now you have to coordinate who's going to pick up all these trash bags of poop. And it all of a sudden became a litter collection problem for staff. So they couldn't maintain that, and they tried signage, but they received a lot of negative feedback because people were upset about being told what they can do with their dogs in parks, and so they just gave up the whole thing and they stopped trying to put educational material out, and so now they just have the problem.
Jennifer Errick: What park?
Dr. Ryan Valdez: Shenandoah.
Jennifer Errick: Oh, so it's here.
Dr. Ryan Valdez: It's right here.
Jennifer Errick: It's right here. So, this is something that isn't just a problem all over. It's a problem that you're most familiar with because it's here at home?
Dr. Ryan Valdez: Well, you can see that if you just walk these trails, you'll find some of these bags. In fact, I've seen them thrown in the bushes, thrown off the trail to be out of view, but there's still a problem. You just have to be aware and be responsible. But I did find that the dog poop bags is probably the number one annoying problem for parks.
Jennifer Errick: Now, you might be wondering how a wildlife ecologist handles the most annoying pet issue in parks. Ryan showed me a recyclable plastic jar with a screw top, similar to a peanut butter jar that he takes with him on walks with Ennio. After he bags the pet waste, he puts the bag in the jar so he doesn't have to touch it or put it directly in his pocket, and the jar can go out again with him the next time or go in the recycling as needed. Okay. Back to the conversation.
What are some of the other problems that you've heard?
Dr. Ryan Valdez: Well, it'll be the off leash dogs. It'll be the barking at campsites. It could be people trying to sneak their pets in, which sometimes happens because if you think of Gateway Arch or something that's clearly not intended for animals because it's not an outdoor park in the traditional sense, people still want them take their animals in there. And they will sneak them in bags, they will bring them under their coats.
Jennifer Errick: Inside buildings?
Dr. Ryan Valdez: Inside buildings. And normally dogs are not allowed inside buildings unless they're a bona fide service dog.
Jennifer Errick: I reached out to staff at a couple of national parks to try to understand what factors influence their pet policies, and what their experiences have been with dogs and dog owners. I spoke with the staff person at Great Smoky Mountains National Park where dogs are permitted in campgrounds and on two specific trails, but prohibited from other areas of the park, except of course for service animals.
Although I was unable to speak with someone on the record by production time, the staff person I initially spoke with explained to me that the park has large wilderness areas that are simply inappropriate for dogs, and is one of the most biodiverse parks in the country with a thriving bear population. Wildlife interactions are a particular concern there. Animals can attack dogs and their owners. Other species such as birds and rodents can be threatened by dogs and change behaviors in their presence.
At New River Gorge National Park and Preserve however, the rules are much less restrictive. According to Dave Bieri, district supervisor at the park, you can bring a non-service dog anywhere except the visitor center as long as it's on a leash. I asked why from a resource protection standpoint, dogs aren't an issue for New River Gorge like they are at other places.
Dave Bieri: I know this park is a little bit more dog-friendly than other parks. I've worked in parks before where we didn't allow dogs on a lot of trails. And some of that had to do with, some of the parks I've worked in before had federal-designated wilderness, which was a reason we didn't allow dogs. Where this park, we don't have any federally designated wilderness. As a matter of fact, most of the park is all land at one time that was timbered, and coal mining, and the railroad and everything else. So there's been some pretty heavy industrial use of the park lands in the past, and it's all regenerated today with forests. It's hard to tell any of that happened today, but it's not necessarily a pristine environment like Yellowstone or one of those kind of parks.
Jennifer Errick: According to Bieri, visitors are often pleasantly surprised to learn that they can bring a dog because so many national parks restrict them.
Dave Bieri: Most people I've talked to about it have been very excited about that. I haven't really run into any negative comments about dogs in the park, and that's the main reason we don't let them in the visitor center. When you're in kind of a smaller space, not everybody's comfortable around dogs, so we don't allow them in the visitor centers. But when you're out on the trails, it's a lot more open and you don't have to get close to people. We do ask people to keep them on the leashes because one of our management concerns, of course, is like wildlife and making sure that the dogs aren't interacting in an adverse way with wildlife.
Jennifer Errick: So, I took a trip to New River Gorge in July, and all of the dogs I encountered were in fact safely on leashes. Bieri told me that problems with pets in the park are relatively rare.
Dave Bieri: We have a lot of areas in the park where there's trails that aren't too far from people's houses, so sometimes people would let their dogs run in the yard off leash and they'd end up in the park. That's been more of the problematic stuff that we've run into. I really haven't run into too many issues with visitors with dogs that have caused issues. Usually people are pretty mindful of that and keep them on the leash. Once in a while there might be two people with dogs coming the opposite ways on the trail and the dogs get into a little altercation, but I haven't really heard too many issues of that or negative interactions with wildlife.
Jennifer Errick: The park has so many well-behaved canine visitors, it's even created special swag for them.
Dave Bieri: Back in 2016 for the hundredth anniversary of the park service, we started a hundred-mile challenge where we were challenging people to hike a hundred miles in the park within a year, and it's something that you can still see on our website that you can still do, and we found that there were so many people doing with dogs that we actually created a special bandana for the dogs that completed the hundred-mile challenge in the park. So, we've always been kind of friendly for people with dogs in the park and even really encouraged it.
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Jennifer Errick: Back at Shenandoah, I ask Ryan if he has general advice for people traveling with dogs, once they know where they can go.
Dr. Ryan Valdez: There are certain things that unless you've done it a few times you don't know. One is you can never have enough of those poop bags in your pockets because they're going to poop when you least expect it, and whether it's right in front of a big pile of school children, or right at the door because you needed to go to the restroom and your partner is holding your dog. It could be anywhere. Water, it's surprising. You need to have a lot more water on you. Dogs can get dehydrated fast and just obviously a very good thing for them to have access to water all the time.
When you first approach a visitor's center, probably the first thing that most people want to do is go to the restroom. So, what are you going to do with your dog? Well, let's say you're alone and with your dog, you're going to leave it in the car? You probably are, but now you're stressed because your dog, even if it's for two minutes, a person seeing a dog in a car these days, especially one in the sun, might not take too well to that. And you could find yourself in a situation where now someone thinks your dog's suffering in a car because it's by itself in the sun and the owner's nowhere to be found.
Jennifer Errick: If you are just going in to use the restroom and maybe ask a ranger a question, let's say it's a 15-minute trip, is a dog going to be safe if you park in the shade and roll the window down?
Dr. Ryan Valdez: Yeah, it depends on the condition. If it's just super hot, it can still be too hot for your dog. But it's the first thing that I'm looking for when I drive into a parking lot at a national park with a dog, is where's the shady spot? But that's one of those things that you have to consider is you just can't pull up. And parking is usually already tight, so you're going to either be in the worst spot, which is in the baking sun or distant, and you have to think about your dog in that condition. So that's one of the things.
Always have more than one leash.
Jennifer Errick: Why?
Dr. Ryan Valdez: Because you might lose one, you could misplace it, it could drop. It's the same thing with the collar and the identification tags. You want your dog to be really properly ID'd. And then it's just you've got to think of the meals and the timing when they have to go to the restroom if you know what that is already.
And so you end up timing everything. You can't just jump in your car and go. Did your dog eat? Is it going to get motion sickness? Which Ennio did get. There's so many things to think about now that you have this small fur baby with you.
And I think the one most impactful thing is if you have to go to get a bite to eat or you have to go and do something, where are you going to leave your dog? You certainly can't leave him tied up outside or something like that. It's going to be in the car. So therefore, just be prepared to figure out a good plan on arrival. If you have a dog that's very large, or rambunctious, or vocal, that can be tough. But the challenge with him is that he loves people so much, he wants to say hi to everybody, and not everyone wants to say hi to a dog.
And I think that's a wake-up call for most dog owners. Not everyone feels the way you do about dogs. I had a friend whose father had a very bad attack by a dog as a child. So by nature, he's intensely terrified when he sees any dog. It could be the tiniest little innocent-looking thing. There are people that are afraid of dogs. It's sort of not fair to them that an off-leash dog now is coming down a trail right to them, maybe just to say hello and with the wagging tail and everything, but you can't know that
Jennifer Errick: I've had that happen so many times in Rock Creek Park where, I mean, I love dogs, but if I've never met a dog before and the first sight I have of it is, it's running down a trail ahead of its owner, not on a leash, and I don't know if it might be aggressive, that is a real problem. And I should say something. I never do. I never say to the owner, "You know, this is a National Park site and by law you need to have that dog on a six-foot leash."
Dr. Ryan Valdez: That is a serious thing to think about. You just never know. But I'm always very aware of other people, and so I will move him off to my side opposite someone I'm passing. I will never pass someone with the dog in between.
Jennifer Errick: In the course of Ryan's research, he's also heard some cautionary tales.
Dr. Ryan Valdez: There were park staff that shared a number of altercations with dogs, and dogs running off and chasing wildlife. In one situation, a dog attacking another owner's dog, and then that dog owner coming back with a gun and shooting the dog. Extreme situations.
Jennifer Errick: Wow.
Dr. Ryan Valdez: They're these odd things can happen. Rangers I think, have experienced just about everything there is to experience, dogs losing their life, dogs getting lost and never being found.
Jennifer Errick: Is that something you've heard commonly?
Dr. Ryan Valdez: Not commonly, but it can happen. Another good reason to keep your dog on a leash. If there's a wildlife encounter and your dog runs off, you don't know if that dog is just so stressed that it just goes and doesn't come back. There are altercations, like you could have a snake bite. Ennio has been bitten by copperhead on the face, and that was-
Jennifer Errick: On the face?
Dr. Ryan Valdez: ... Right here in the front of our house, but he was behaving perfectly normal. And it wasn't until an hour later that he had a puffy cheek. And I thought, oh, no. At that point, I wasn't sure whether I should take him to the ER or not, but obviously the safest thing to do is that. So I didn't take a chance. He recovered pretty much instantly. So that can happen.
And if you're deep in a park and God forbid you get your dog bitten by a rattlesnake, that dog probably won't survive. So you've just got to be really careful, and that's why the leash is so important. Your dog's going to want to go in front of you, and poke his nose into every crevice and corner, behind logs, in rocks, everywhere, and you just don't know what's there. But I found that Rangers have seen all of this, and I think if you just follow those BARK Ranger values, you're not going to have any issues
Jennifer Errick: As if to prove the point, we go for a walk in the woods after our talk. It's a Tuesday afternoon, and we have the trail to ourselves. The trees are full and green. The day is warm, but not oppressive, and Ennio seems eager to finally get outside after waiting for over an hour for the humans to finish talking. He's a year old, but still has the energy and curiosity of a young puppy, bounding along the trail on his leash and splashing in the river, pointing with his nose at birds and squirrels as we approach them. It's a perfect day to be in a park, and Ennio's company undoubtedly makes it that much better.
Though Ryan has just gone through a laundry list of potential dangers, inconveniences, and personal worries about all the pitfalls people can encounter when traveling with dogs, it's clear how the joy can outweigh the risks and make the extra planning worth it. For his part, Ryan is hoping his new map will make that planning a little easier.
And when it comes to making room for a dog in his life, for him, there's just no question he made the right choice.
Dr. Ryan Valdez: I couldn't possibly imagine living here without canine companionship.
[end theme]
The Secret Lives of Parks is a production of the National Parks Conservation Association.
Episode 33, For the Love of Dog, was produced by me, Jennifer Errick, with help from Todd Christopher, Bev Stanton and Linda Coutant.
Special thanks to Charlie, Beans and Blu, canine companions of NPCA Special Events and Design Director Rachel Holmes and Video Production Manager Terrance Liggins for providing the barking noises used in this story.
Original theme music by Chad Fischer.
Learn more about Dr. Ryan Valdez’s research project and view his interactive map at npca.org/dogs
Learn more about the National Park Service BARK Ranger program at nps.gov/subjects/pets/
Learn more about this podcast and listen to the rest of our stories at thesecretlivesofparks.org
For more than a century, the National Parks Conservation Association has been protecting and enhancing America’s national parks for present and future generations. With more than 1.6 million members and supporters, NPCA is the nation’s only independent, nonpartisan advocacy organization dedicated to protecting national parks.
And we’re proud of it, too.
You can join the fight to preserve our national parks. Learn more and join us at npca.org