Frequently asked questions

No. Dogs are prohibited in every one of New Zealand's national parks under the National Parks Act 1980 s 56A, and the ban runs to the foreshore inside the park, down to the low tide mark. The ways in are narrow: a dog control permit issued by the Director-General under s 56B, an authorisation under s 56E, or a bylaw made under the Act, and neither is handed out so someone can take a pet for a walk. There is one exception that matters to real people: a certified disability assist dog may go anywhere on conservation land while assisting, including national parks. Taking a dog in without authority is an offence carrying up to 12 months imprisonment or a fine of up to $10,000 (s 56I), and the dog can be seized. We map 168 DOC areas that are closed to dogs, and the rest of the closed list is set out in where dogs cannot go.

Sometimes, but a permit is not the main gate. Most public conservation land is closed to dogs. You can take a dog only onto the parts DOC has approved for dog access, and taking one anywhere else on conservation land, shore or foreshore is an offence, even briefly. Within the approved places DOC runs three states: some need a DOC dog permit, some are dogs on a leash only, and some are dogs allowed under control. National parks are closed to pet dogs whatever permit you hold. So check DOC's page for the exact track, hut or campsite, or our verdict on it. Where a permit does apply you get it from the DOC office or visitor centre that manages the land, not from a web form, and DOC says allow up to five days. Of the 77 DOC campsites we map, 28 need a permit, 45 ask only that your dog is on a lead, and 3 have no dog policy stated by DOC at all, which we publish as unknown rather than counting as welcoming. Detail in the DOC permit guide.

That depends on the beach, the date and often the hour, which is why the honest answer is a lookup rather than a rule. Beach dog rules are made by city and district councils, not by DOC and not by regional councils. We hold 2,985 mapped dog zones from 22 councils, and 98 of those carry a parsed seasonal window with real dates and times. A common Wellington pattern runs 1 December to 1 March with dogs prohibited between 10am and 7pm and allowed outside those hours, and Wellington also closes some beaches to dogs from 1 November to 30 April. Other councils draw it completely differently, which is the point: there is no national summer beach rule to memorise. We resolve the windows we hold against today's date on the map and on each beach page, and where we hold no zone we publish unknown rather than a guess. The sign at the entrance beats everything, including us. More on the patterns in beaches and seasons.

Rarely, and never by assumption. A hut follows the land it sits on: if dogs are not approved for that piece of conservation land then the hut is out, and every hut inside a national park is out. Of the 527 huts we map, DOC states dogs allowed at 24, dogs on a lead at 7, and a permit requirement at 109. For 386 of them DOC states nothing about dogs at all, and we publish that as unknown, because unknown is not permission. Even where the land allows a dog, a hut is a shared bunkroom with strangers in it, so ring the DOC office that manages it before you build a trip around a night there. Bookings, hut fees and the dog question are three separate conversations, and only the first two can be sorted online. The working detail is in overnight and huts.

Longer than the drop itself, and the boundary on the map is not the boundary of the hazard. DOC puts 1080 in pesticide group 3, with a four month caution period, and brodifacoum, the poison in many bait stations, in group 4, with three years. Those caution periods describe how long residues persist in carcasses and game meat, not a countdown to when a dog is safe. In practice, warning signs stay up until bait and carcass monitoring shows residues have gone, and the removal date DOC publishes is an estimate that gets extended. Dogs are extremely vulnerable to 1080, and the usual route in is a poisoned possum carcass rather than the bait. Rain moves the risk outside the block: in September 2025 Greater Wellington warned that carcasses may have washed down the Ōrongorongo River as far as Wainuiomata Beach, and said that warning could stand for up to four months. Read the signs at the trailhead, and if your dog eats something, drive to a vet and tell them what you think it was. The rest of the poison picture is in poison and hazards.

Probably not, because for a pet the answer DOC gives is to stay out of kiwi country rather than to train for it. DOC is blunt that the training "does not make a dog kiwi-proof", that it is aimed at dogs with jobs, meaning hunting and farm dogs that have to be in kiwi habitat, and that all other dogs should be kept away from areas where kiwi live. Two situations do make it necessary: some councils have areas dogs cannot enter unless they have been trained, and some DOC regions ask for avian awareness and avoidance training before they will issue a permit. The method is worth knowing before you book. The dog is walked past props such as a taxidermied kiwi or nesting material and receives a short sharp shock from a collar operated by the trainer if it shows interest. Dogs have to pass basic obedience first, and refreshers run at 6, 12 or 24 month intervals. Save the Kiwi runs the programme and endorsed trainers are listed at kiwiavoidancetraining.nz.

The law here is heavier than most owners expect, and it is the Dog Control Act 1996 doing the work rather than any conservation statute. Under s 58, an owner whose dog attacks protected wildlife and causes death or injury requiring the animal to be destroyed is liable to up to three years imprisonment or a fine of up to $20,000, and the court must order the dog destroyed unless the circumstances were exceptional. DOC states the same thing in plain words on its kiwi pages. Under s 59, where a dog is at large and is an immediate threat to protected wildlife, the occupier of the land or their agent may seize or destroy it there and then. Seals and sea lions add a second layer: DOC notes it is an offence under the Marine Mammals Protection Act 1978 to disturb, harass, harm, injure or kill a New Zealand sea lion, and that a dog owner whose dog attacks a seal could face prosecution. The practical version is short. Scan ahead, and when you see wildlife, clip the lead on and pass at least 20 metres away, which is DOC's guidance rather than a measured statutory distance.

Only if it is properly secured. A dog on the open deck or open trailer of a moving vehicle on a public road has to be restrained so that it cannot fall or hang off the side, and a tether long enough to let the dog reach the edge is not a restraint. Working farm dogs that are actively working are treated differently. The reason to bother is not the paperwork. In September 2023 an unrestrained American bulldog fell from an open deck on Main North Road in Christchurch at about 60kmh, fracturing its patella and injuring its head and mouth. The driver was prosecuted for failing to secure the dog and ordered to pay $1,941.59 in reparation to the SPCA, against a maximum penalty of $900. Leaving a dog in a parked car is a separate matter again, covered by the Animal Welfare (Care and Procedures) Regulations 2018, and a shaded car park in a New Zealand summer is still an oven. Ferries, buses, flights and long drives are covered in getting around.

Check for toxic algae before your dog goes in, every time, on every one of the 899 walks we map with a swim stop. In rivers it forms soft leathery mats on rocks, blackish brown through to dark green, and when it detaches and dries it turns light brown or white, looks like dried leaves or a cowpat, and gives off a strong musty smell that dogs find extremely interesting. In lakes the cyanobacteria makes the water murky, sometimes like paint, petrol or pea soup, often with scum at the edge. A piece the size of a 50c coin is enough to kill a dog. The signs are lethargy, muscle tremors, fast breathing, twitching, paralysis and convulsions, and in extreme cases death can follow within 30 minutes of those signs appearing. LAWA publishes regional warnings, and its own caveat is the load-bearing part: councils cannot monitor everywhere, so no warning does not mean safe. Carry water from home, keep the lead on near suspect water, and if you think your dog swallowed any, go to a vet immediately.

350 of the 1,904 walks we map are off-lead, and we list 1,051 council dog parks and off-leash areas, 24 of them fully fenced dog parks. On conservation land DOC sets the rule place by place, and two states matter: dogs on a leash only, where the lead stays on for the whole visit, and dogs allowed under control, where DOC does not require a lead but your dog must stay under control at all times. DOC sets no lead length anywhere in the country, so the two metre lead we suggest is our advice, not law. Council off-lead areas are the other half of the picture, and plenty of them flip with the season or the time of day, so check the date as well as the place. One thing that catches people out: you are required to have a lead with you in a public place even inside an off-lead area, and DOC says the same. Start with the off-lead list.

475 of the 1,904 walks we list carry a verdict traced to a named authority: DOC's own place pages and datasets, Herenga ā Nuku Aotearoa for public access, and the dog bylaws of 22 city and district councils, which together give us 2,985 mapped zones including 98 with parsed seasonal windows. The rest rest on licensed public walk data published on the conservative reading, with the authority that governs the spot named on the page, and each walk page says which lane it is on. When no source states dog access we publish unknown instead of yes, which is why we have refused 20 places for want of evidence, dropped 80 where dogs are not allowed, and corrected 285 of our own earlier verdicts. The whole method, lane by lane, including what each lane can and cannot prove, is written up in how we check.

No. Every walk, region, beach and campsite page is open, and so is the map. An account exists for one reason: logging the walks you and your dog have actually done. That gives you a record, region progress that fills in as you go, and a place on the pack leaderboard. It takes an email address and nothing else, there is no social sign-in to set up, and nothing you need in order to plan a safe day out sits behind it.

No, and that is deliberate: Hiking Dogs is an installable web app, so there is nothing to download and no store listing. If Google Play Protect or your phone warns you about a “Hiking Dogs” app, that is not us; close it and use hikingdogs.co.nz in your browser.

To install it: open hikingdogs.co.nz in Safari (iPhone) or Chrome (Android), tap Share, then Add to Home Screen. One catch: the browser built into Facebook, Instagram and Messenger cannot do this. If you arrived from a Facebook post, tap the three dots at the top first and choose Open in browser (or Open in Safari), then add it to your home screen from there. You get a full-screen app with its own icon, and it updates itself.

You earn XP by logging a walk you have actually done, not by browsing one. There is a bonus for the first dog proven on a track, with a photo, which we call the pioneer ribbon. As the logs stack up your region progress fills in across the 15 regions we cover, so a profile ends up reading as a map of where you and your dog have been rather than a score for reading pages.

Easy suits any fitness level, on formed track with little climbing. Moderate adds elevation or rougher ground. Hard wants good fitness and a decent slice of the day. Expert means long or technical, and rewards experience. The ratings describe the walk for the human, so read them next to the elevation profile we compute for every track, then apply your own dog: a fit huntaway and a nine year old pug get very different days out of the same moderate. In a New Zealand summer it is usually heat rather than distance that ends a walk early. Method notes are in walking with your dog.