Capehart, Pacific Beach\u2019s only off-leash dog park, has been open nine years but the debate that led to its creation on Soledad Mountain Road rather than in Kate Sessions Memorial Park on Soledad Road lingers.
\nBut the dogs don\u2019t care. Large or small, at Capehart Park at 4747 Soledad Mountain Road, they\u2019re just there to play.
\nBuilt for $632,000 and opened in 2004, Capehart, with distinct large- and small-dog fenced-in areas, has been the place for dog owners to let their pets strut their stuff. And strut they do. Big ones, little ones, dirty ones, groomed ones, dressed-up ones, purebreds and mutts, they all share one thing in common at Capehart: Time to run and play under the sun.
\nThe off-leash park, however, continues to have its critics. Nearly a decade ago when it first opened, detractors argued the park was neither wide enough, long enough or well-tended enough to be a top-flight off-leash park the community could be proud of.
\nPacific Beach Realtor Kevin Dougherty, co-founder of PB Dogs, a group that unsuccessfully advocated for an off-leash area instead around the corner and up the hill at Kate Sessions Park, believes Capehart then \u2014 and now \u2014 is inadequate.
\n“I think that park is a disaster, just as it was predicted,” said Dougherty, adding the density and concentration of dogs at Capehart has destroyed the park.
\n“It\u2019s a mud pit now, a dirt patch,” he said. “It\u2019s way too small. You can\u2019t maintain it at all. There\u2019s no way you could with such a little tiny place and such a high concentration of dogs. You\u2019re coming in off a highly trafficked road compromising the safety of dogs. It\u2019s totally inappropriate and it\u2019s been a disastrous, expensive experiment.”
\nDougherty said an extensive citywide study of the feasibility of prospective off-leash parks done a decade or more ago ranked Kate Sessions Park “No. 1.” He credited a “small-yet-vocal minority of dog-hating neighbors,” some of whom he claimed “didn\u2019t even use the park,” as the reason why there\u2019s an off-leash dog park at Capehart and not Kate Sessions.
\nEve Anderson, a longtime member of the loosely associated neighborhood group Friends of Kate Sessions Park, begs to differ with Doughtery. “It\u2019s been incredible,” said Anderson of dog owners\u2019 experiences at\u00a0Capehart.
\nAnderson recalls it was a “couple of dog owners, primarily owners of large dogs,” who wanted to create an off-leash park at Kate Sessions, where she said it wasn\u2019t warranted.
\n“Little kids and old people don\u2019t want to be around a bunch of off-leash dogs \u2014 it\u2019s dangerous,” Anderson said, adding it also wouldn\u2019t have been in keeping with the park\u2019s namesake, the late Kate Sessions.
\n“She was a landscape designer and she would have been horrified if she\u2019d seen dogs desecrating her park,” Anderson said.
\nAnderson said the attempt by dog owners to create an off-leash park at Kate Sessions, ultimately scuttled by a neighborhood petition drive opposing it, fell short because proponents bit off more than they could chew.
\n“They didn\u2019t want to take one small part at the bottom for the dogs and fence it off,” Anderson said. “They wanted to use the main hill of Kate Sessions, one of the most beautiful hills in San Diego with the most gorgeous views, and ruin it by taking it for the dogs.”
\nBy contrast, Anderson noted Capehart Park, long and linear, is “always full,” adding it\u2019s a “very social thing” for people, as well as animals.
\n“It\u2019s better for smaller dogs rather than larger,” admitted Anderson. “They need a little more room and it\u2019s a shame we don\u2019t have more room.”
\nOn a recent day at Capehart, dog owners discussed their feelings about the park. The general consensus was that the grassy small-dog area is superior to the large-dog area, which is nearly all dirt.
\nOverall though, dog owners were mostly positive about Capehart Park and the people and animals that frequent it.
\n“It\u2019s sensational, very animal-friendly and safe,” said one La Jollan who was in the small-dog area with his bandana-clad shaggy dog, Cody. “I like the idea of it being fenced, and it\u2019s nicely maintained for what it is. It isn\u2019t designed to be a golf green.”
\nTold about the decade-old debate over whether it would have been better to have the off-leash park at Kate Sessions instead, he replied, “I don\u2019t like the idea of that place because it\u2019s not fenced. To me, it\u2019s dangerous. And it doesn\u2019t draw a nice element of people. There\u2019s lots of drinking going on there at night with the kids. That\u2019s not my schtick.”
\nAnother park user, Jenny (who declined to give her last name) of Pacific Beach, said she and husband Jason like the location.
\n“I like it because it\u2019s convenient, easy to get to after work,” she said. “Obviously, it\u2019s very dirty,” she said of the large-dog enclosure.
\nAnother park patron agreed about the untidiness of the park\u2019s big-dog enclosure.
\n“It\u2019s so dirty I have to give my dog a bath afterward every time,” she said.
\nOthers were less critical of the park, but brought up other issues.
\n“I love it. It\u2019s great,” said Katie Weeks of La Jolla. “It\u2019s nice they have a small-dog area and a big-dog area. What we do have here, though, is a parking problem. We\u2019ve had numerous accidents.”
\nWeeks\u2019 companion said people not infrequently attempt to do a U-turns near the park and end up “getting slammed by people coming down the hill.”
\n“Maybe it could be a little bigger,” said Nick from Pacific Beach. “People here are actually really nice, they\u2019re really good dog owners.”
\nJenny of Pacific Beach said there\u2019s one big thing missing from Capehart.
\n“I wish it had some solar lighting so it could be lit a little longer, especially in the wintertime,” she said. “It\u2019s pitch black here. We\u2019ve parked our truck and shone lights in here just to get her (dog) out.”
\nCapehart got the seal of approval from Jenny\u2019s husband, Jason.
\n“If you need a place to go, and you don\u2019t have a backyard, it\u2019s a good place to be,” he said.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Capehart, Pacific Beach\u2019s only off-leash dog park, has been open nine years but the debate that led to its creation on Soledad Mountain Road rather than in Kate Sessions Memorial Park on Soledad Road lingers. But the dogs don\u2019t care. Large or small, at Capehart Park at 4747 Soledad Mountain Road, they\u2019re just there to […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":280295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"Where the hounds roam free","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bay-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}