Frequently Asked Questions

• Please have positive control over your dog
• Non retractable leash 
• Well-fitting gear (collars/tools)
• No females in heat
• Clean up all poop
• No nose-to-nose greetings until after the walk

No registration necessary! Just show up a little early to find parking, adhere to the safety protocols, and be ready for a great walk!

Our walk is completely free and an open community event. 

Absolutely! We just ask that you communicate our safety protocols to anyone that you invite. 

Directly behind Whole Foods in Laguna Niguel. We walk into the back entrance to Laguna Niguel Regional Park 

For safety reasons, we recommend that your dog have all distemper/parvo vaccinations and be at least 15/16 weeks of age. 

    For reactive dogs, we recommend that you arrive a little early and walk ahead of our pack until we get out of the more narrow area and take our first break, which is after crossing the bridge. Once the pack has spread out, it will be much easier for your dog to walk calmly. You are also welcome to drive into the park ($5 for parking) and meet us right by the pickle ball courts at our first break. During the walk, we recommend staying at the front of the pack until your dog feels more comfortable. We also promote a lot of positive communication, such as looking at your dog, giving instructions, whenever applicable, praising frequently, and staying quiet in your voice to your dog (as opposed to yelling). You are welcome to tie a yellow ribbon around your dog’s leash to designate more space needed but we cannot guarantee that others will recognize that visual, so it is up to you to create and maintain space when needed. If you have more serious concerns, please reach out to us directly.  

Absolutely! As long as you are following the safety protocols mentioned above and the muzzle is breathable, muzzled dogs are welcome to attend. We applaud owner efforts to safely expose their dogs to good experiences like our walk. 

Including breaks, our walk is almost always 1.5 hours, and it is typically 3.5 miles round-trip. As long as the weather permits, we walk all the way around the lake. During hotter months, we may stop and turn around to maintain more shade for the teams, but the timeframe is typically the same. We walk at a moderate pace.  

There are a couple options to making your walk shorter, and while we hope that you do walk the entire time with us, we understand that not everyone make complete the walk with us for many reasons. 

Once we enter the park, the walk is almost primarily wheelchair accessible. We recommend owners drive into the park and park by the pickleball courts to meet us where the pavement starts.

There are 3 locations for water during our walk and 2 at the exit. The water access is from spigots, so if your dog does not drink from a spigot you are advised to bring a collapsible bowl or water bottle for your dog. 

Much of the park offers shade. The trail on the back half is not but we typically do not complete that half on the hottest months. 

Thankfully we have never felt hot pavement on our walks! We do test frequently. 

Unfortunately if it rains or scheduled to rain, we do cancel for the safety of everyone to not slip and fall in muddy conditions.  

As long as there is an adult present for their care, absolutely. It is a public park with 100-150 dogs regularly attending this walk so we ask that every child attending be monitored by a parent or guardian.  If handling the dog by themselves they must be able to 100% control the dog. 

Sometimes we do host an evening walk, but our walks are only scheduled on Saturdays.

 In the interests of everyone’s enjoyment and to preserve the integrity of our walk, we are not accepting sponsors or vendors at this time. If and when this policy changes we will update this section and make an announcement. 

In 2018, behavioral specialists Emily Haley of The Dog Listener and Tommy Stark of I Speak Dog formed the La Pawz Dog Team in efforts to promote more structured social exposure and enjoyable walks for our community members. Dogs that learn to simply “be” around each other without heightened excitement and intensity,  have much more appropriate social etiquette. Walking together as a unit promotes calmer social behavior as well. We’ve had so many tell us how much their confidence has increased because of these walks, and we love seeing the continued benefits.