Before you go: the questions worth asking

Most trips that go wrong with a dog go wrong before anyone leaves the driveway. The place was fine. The hour was wrong, or the surface was, or there was a sign at the gate nobody read. These are the questions worth asking first, roughly in the order they bite.

1. Who manages the land?

This is the most useful question in Australia, and the answer runs against instinct. A national park sounds like the obvious place to walk a dog. In practice most Australian national parks exclude dogs entirely, and in Tasmania the ban covers the national parks and most reserves as well. A council reserve, a regional park or a state forest is far more likely to let you in.

Flinders Peak is the one to remember. It is a real summit walk an hour from Melbourne, 450 steps and a view over Port Phillip, and dogs are welcome on lead, because the You Yangs are a regional park rather than a national one. Look up who manages a place, not what it looks like from the road.

Boundaries inside a single site matter too. Kings Park in Perth takes dogs on a lead no longer than two metres, but not within ten metres of a playground, not on the elevated Federation Walkway, not inside Naturescape and not on event days.

2. What is the lead rule, and at what hour?

Off-leash rarely means all day. At Nutgrove Beach in Sandy Bay the City of Hobart allows dogs off lead from 6pm to 10am during daylight saving and from 3pm to 10am for the rest of the year, on lead in between, and on lead at two of the entrances whatever the clock says. One beach, three rules.

So the question is not whether somewhere is off-leash, but whether it is off-leash at the hour you will be standing there, in the month you are going, at the end you are parking at.

3. Is there water and shade?

Assume neither. The Alum Cliffs Track near Hobart has no water on it, so what your dog drinks in three hours is what you carried in. Flinders Peak finishes on exposed granite with no shade and a lot of wind. Carry more than you think, and something to pour it into.

4. What is the ground doing?

Sand, bitumen, decking and city paving all get hot enough to burn a paw pad on a day that feels merely warm to somebody in shoes. It comes up in entry after entry: hot sand at Nutgrove, Brisbane decking at Felons, paving at The Grounds.

Put the back of your hand flat on the surface and hold it there for a slow count of five. If you want to lift it off, so does your dog.

5. What is in the grass?

Snakes are active across most of the country from spring to autumn, and the dog that noses through long grass is the one that gets bitten. Keep to the track, keep the lead short where the grass is long, and find the nearest open vet before you set off rather than one-handed afterwards.

6. Is anything being baited?

This one is not about comfort. 1080 is the poison used for fox and wild dog control in parts of Australia. It is laid as meat baits, it does not smell like poison to a dog, and a dog that eats one usually dies. Baited areas are signposted at the entrances, and that signage is the only reliable way to know, because programs start and stop.

The Flinders Peak entry carries this caution, not because baiting in the You Yangs is confirmed, but because reading the notices at the gate is the habit that keeps a dog alive. Do it every time, and never let a dog scavenge. If you think yours has taken a bait, that is a vet immediately, not a wait and see.

7. And the paperwork

Registration and current vaccination are standard conditions at holiday parks. Marengo at Apollo Bay asks for both, including a C3 vaccine, and Reflections at Bonny Hills can ask for proof. Dogs declared dangerous or menacing, or of a restricted breed, are excluded from leash-free areas outright. Bring your own waste bags, because Kings Park, for one, does not supply them.

Say there is a dog when you book. Marengo can refuse one that arrives unannounced, and the pet friendly cabins at BIG4 St Helens are held off the online booking system, so you have to ring. If you are taking a dog to Tasmania, check the current Biosecurity Tasmania entry conditions, including hydatid tapeworm treatment, well before you sail.

Twenty minutes with a council page and the venue's own site is the difference between a day out and a drive home.