What are the most dog (pet) friendly places in Austin i.e. shops, restaurants, parks? (Dallas: apartment, hotels)

[Need a Brake]

Just looking for a few good dog (pet) friendly ideas. Please provide some detail about your answer.

Thanks,
Chad - NAB

[kbchitown]

Seems like everywhere. I am a big animal lover....but how can people keep great danes or any large dog(S) in an apartment? And please, when you approach people, keep your dog on a short leash. AND PICK UP THE POOP!!!!!!

[MtnLion512]

Originally Posted by Need a Brake

Just looking for a few good dog (pet) friendly ideas. Please provide some detail about your answer.

Thanks,
Chad - NAB

Norwood Estate is a great little fenced dog park. My mutt always has fun running endlessly in a scrum of other overactive pups I believe it's the SW corner of Riverside and 35.

Red's Porch is a great restaurant on South Lamar that has an awesome outdoor shaded & fanned patio area where you can bring dogs. They'll provide a little water bowl for your pup and the human food is great there to boot!

Originally Posted by kbchitown

Seems like everywhere. I am a big animal lover....but how can people keep great danes or any large dog(S) in an apartment? And please, when you approach people, keep your dog on a short leash. AND PICK UP THE POOP!!!!!!

Why can't they live in an apartment? Lots of breeds, esp. Danes, are very calm indoors and don't need constant exercise. Size isn't always the biggest factor in whether a dog will be OK in an apartment. For some breeds, you're right - I'm sure labs struggle in an apartment. I have a very active flattie mix, who loves to run when outside but is extremely calm indoors. We currently live in an apt but when we had a house with a large yard in CO, he still got 80-90% of his exercise from walks, runs, hikes, and dog park trips. Now he gets 100% from that Obviously a yard is preferable but many large dogs can do just fine in an apartment if owner is intentional about exercise.

[quince]

So many places. The Triangle has a park (not fenced in) where dogs run around off-leash and on.

At the triangle the Flying Saucer is beer place/restaurant where dogs are welcome and always present. Galaxy Cafe you can dine outside with them too. (also at the Triangle)

So you can take for a walk then go right for a drink or dinner at the same locale.

Draught House on medical has an outdoor beer garden where dogs are welcome. They don't provide water but they have misters and tons of umbrellas for shade.

Dogs are really welcome so many places. The statesman just had an article on dogs living Downtown.

Zoom Room is great for indoor play for your dogs, you can take classes or just go to Open Gym. Great when it's super hot out.

[eichlerfan]

Originally Posted by kbchitown

Seems like everywhere. I am a big animal lover....but how can people keep great danes or any large dog(S) in an apartment? And please, when you approach people, keep your dog on a short leash. AND PICK UP THE POOP!!!!!!

It's not the size of the place they live, but how often they get out and exercise. Nice long walks will do the trick for any dog regardless of how big or small their house is. Oh, and running around the backyard is not exercise for a dog.

[BevoLJ]

Downtown is going to the dogs

[curious1111]

Would be much easier to ask what are places that are NOT pet friendly. We have a dog. We love dogs. But I do think sometimes we are going a bit overboard with the number of dogs and prevalence/access in the Austin area. There have been several examples of water areas in particular that had to be shut down because of the amount of dog feces and urine, breeding bad bacteria. Those waterways were not meant by nature to take 300 dogs in them at one time every weekend. But I digress. You should have absolutely no problem in most areas, hotels, even restaurants, shopping, etc. One of the little/minor things I have noticed in Austin is how many shops put out water bowls. I think that this is a nice/cool thing to do, and not bad marketing either... people are more likely to walk in and buy if they have a nice bowl of water for their dog outside, etc.

[chicagorunner]

Great to see that Austin is so dog friendly, and I saw this first hand when I visited this past weekend;

I'm moving to Austin from downtown Chicago later this month, and while you'll see a good amount of dogs here in Chicago, overall the city is just not very dog friendly at all.

I'm not sure why, but I suspect that at it's root it was a long history of stupid people that didn't know how to care for and control their dogs, and couldn't tell what was and wasn't appropriate for dogs, so more and more rules had to be made.

It seemed clear to me when I was there that the demographic of people in Austin are more intelligent, socially outgoing, and have more common sense that those here in Chicago.

I'm looking forward to living there soon!

[BevoLJ]

While most all places around Austin are very dog friendly please be careful at some of the no leash parks. I have heard some pretty bad stories from some where there is some sort of bacteria (I think someone else mentioned it above) that is common in those parks that get to much use from the dogs. It can make the dogs very sick if they get it on their paws and they lick their paws.

I really know nothing about all that, but just something I have heard quite a bit about recently that you might want to look into and be aware of while you and your little friend are out and about town.

[curious1111]

Originally Posted by BevoLJ

While most all places around Austin are very dog friendly please be careful at some of the no leash parks. I have heard some pretty bad stories from some where there is some sort of bacteria (I think someone else mentioned it above) that is common in those parks that get to much use from the dogs. It can make the dogs very sick if they get it on their paws and they lick their paws.

I really know nothing about all that, but just something I have heard quite a bit about recently that you might want to look into and be aware of while you and your little friend are out and about town.

Parks, creeks, etc. And not just bad for dogs, also very dangerous for kids. Our friends visited fro Dallas and found this part of Austin culture odd...I.E. seems like the dogs put a bit before people. A tangible example of this is Bull Creek. I remember taking my dog there back when student at UT. Went back recently to find it shut down. Not sure the answer here, but I do worry that with 55k UT students, we end up with a lot of "temporary" dog owners and and over population of dogs...and that can be damaging to the environment an people, in a bit of a "green" irony/hypocrisy