Aug 26, 2026

Off-Leash Dog Parks in New Orleans: Two, and One of Them Costs Money

The honest count from official sources is two facilities. One is free and undocumented, the other is $85 a year and heavily regulated. Here is both, plus what we left out.

Luis ZamoraCo-founder of PetCompass; Dog Dad to Banzo and Tuck

New Orleans, Louisiana11 min readThings to Do

New Orleans has 113 parks in its recreation department's own directory. Exactly one of them has a dog run.

We counted, because the numbers you find elsewhere do not match what the city publishes. The New Orleans Recreation Development Commission's parks directory carries an amenities list for every facility it manages, and readers can filter by amenity. The filter includes "Dog run". One park comes back.

Add the permit-only dog park inside City Park, which NORDC does not manage, and the honest total for public off-leash space inside Orleans Parish is two facilities. One is free and almost entirely undocumented. The other is well documented and costs $85 a year.

That is the real picture, and we would rather give you a short accurate list than a long one padded with places we could not verify.

The two

Facility	Run by	Cost	Documentation
Wisner Playground & Dog Run, 4877 Laurel St.	NORDC	Free, as far as published	Almost none
NOLA City Bark, 10 Magnolia Drive	City Park Conservancy	$85 a year for one dog	Extensive

Wisner Playground & Dog Run

The NORDC facility page gives an address, a council district and a list of amenities. That is it.

Address: 4877 Laurel St., New Orleans, LA 70115, in the Uptown area. Council District B. Contact 504.658.3052 or [email protected]. The page footer records a last update of 1 April 2026, so it is being maintained.

Amenities listed, verbatim: "Basketball courts (outdoors)", "Dog run", "Fenced", "Fields (all-purpose)", "Fields (baseball)", "Play equipment".

Two of those matter for a dog owner. "Dog run" and "Fenced". A fenced facility with a dog run, in a neighbourhood park, at no stated cost.

Here is what NORDC does not publish for it, and we are listing the gaps rather than filling them:

No hours. Not on the facility page, not on the parks directory entry.
No rules. No leash-off boundary, no size split, no vaccination requirement, no aggression policy.
No permit requirement, and no statement that none is needed. The absence of a permit page is not the same as a published "no permit needed".
No indication of whether the dog run is separately fenced from the ball fields and play equipment, or whether "Fenced" describes the whole park.
No size. No acreage or square footage.

So the practical advice is unusually plain: phone 504.658.3052 before you go. Ask whether the dog run is open, what hours it keeps, and whether it has its own gate. Those are three questions a five-minute call answers and a website does not.

And treat the general leash rule as applying everywhere else in that park. Orleans Parish requires dogs on a leash, and the Louisiana SPCA's Animal Control FAQ answers the question "Does my dog have to be on a leash?" with a single word: "Yes." A designated dog run is the exception; the ball field twenty feet away is not.

NOLA City Bark

The opposite situation. Everything is published, and you cannot get in without arranging it first.

City Park describes it as "City Park's 4.6-acre, keycard-access dog park", and its City Bark page states: "NOLA City Bark is a permit-only dog park. You and your dog(s) must have a permit to enter the dog park. NO exceptions will be made."

The headline numbers:

Item	Detail
Address	10 Magnolia Drive, New Orleans, LA 70124
Hours	Wednesday to Monday 5:30am to 9pm; Tuesday 3pm to 9pm
One dog, one year	$85
Two dogs	$125
Three dogs	$150
Two weeks, temporary	$25

The hours are quoted from City Park's page, which prints the ranges with dashes our house style does not use; we have substituted "to" and are saying so.

Eligibility is a real gate rather than a formality. Dogs must be at least six months old, spayed or neutered, heartworm negative, and current on rabies, DHLPP and Bordetella, with proof required at application. There is a three-dogs-per-household cap inside the fence, a 25-pound ceiling for the small dog side, and a ban on treats, human food, rope toys, prong and choke collars, strollers and glass.

Free one-month permits exist for foster families, which is the one route in that does not cost anything.

We have written up the full rule set, the double-gate procedure and the incident reporting numbers separately, because there is enough of it to warrant its own page.

The interaction worth flagging. Orleans Parish lets you keep an intact dog if you hold an intact dog permit. City Bark does not accept that permit as an alternative to spaying or neutering. So a dog can be entirely legal in New Orleans and still be barred from the city's main dog park.

What we did not include, and why

This is the part that matters, because a search for dog parks in New Orleans returns names that are not on our list.

Crescent Park. Several aggregator sites describe a dog run in Crescent Park, in the Bywater. We went to the park's own domain, crescentparknola.org. It resolves, and it serves the City of New Orleans site framework. It carries no dog content at all. No dog run page, no rules, no mention of pets in any link on the page. We are not going to tell you a dog run exists on the strength of listing sites when the park's own web presence does not mention it. If it exists, it is undocumented by its operator, which means we cannot tell you its hours, whether it is fenced, or whether it is currently open.

Private off-leash venues. There is at least one bar-and-dog-park business in the city that operates a membership model. It is a business rather than a public park, its rules are its own, and it is outside what this guide covers.

Parks in Jefferson Parish and across the lake. Metairie, Gretna and Mandeville have dog parks. They are also different parishes with different animal control agencies and, in some cases, different permit rules. If you are prepared to drive, they are worth looking at, but they are not New Orleans and we are not going to blur that line in a guide about Orleans Parish.

Where dogs can walk, if not run

Since the off-leash options are two, most dog exercise in New Orleans is on a lead. It is worth knowing what the two large parks permit, because they are not the same.

City Park. Its rules and policies page states: "Pets must remain on leash at all times and in possession by the owner. Owners must pick up after their pets and properly dispose of waste. Pets are only allowed in open areas and the NOLA City Bark dog park." In a park the Conservancy describes as "over 1,300 acres", that last clause narrows things considerably. Attractions are out. Park hours are 5am to 10pm daily.

Audubon Park. Its rules page states: "Animals must always be securely leashed and remain in possession by the owner while in the park", and cites the source as "City Ordinance Chapter 18 Article I Section 18-14". Hours are 5am to 10pm daily. There is no dog run. Audubon does publish a 24-hour security number, (504) 628-3988, and notes eight emergency call boxes through the parks, which is a genuinely useful thing to know if you walk there early.

Both parks, then, are leash-only ground. Long, shaded, walkable leash-only ground, which in a hot and humid city is not nothing.

How we counted, and why it matters

Worth a paragraph, because the number is the point of this page.

NORDC's parks directory serves its facility data with an amenities array attached to each park, and the page offers visitors a filter with "Dog run" as one of the options. We read the whole set rather than the first page of results: 113 parks, each with its own amenity list. One of them, Wisner, carries "Dog run".

That is not a claim about what exists on the ground. Parks change, and a facility can be built before a database entry catches up. It is a claim about what the city's recreation commission currently publishes about its own estate, which is the only thing we are in a position to verify. If you know of a NORDC dog run that is not in the directory, the directory is what needs correcting, and 504.658.3052 is the number.

What one dog run means in practice

A city of this size with one free dog run and one paid one is not a city where spontaneous off-leash time is available to most people. That has a few consequences worth planning around rather than discovering.

Off-leash is not a legal option outside those two places. Orleans Parish requires a leash and publishes no exception. A quiet neutral ground at dawn is still a leash requirement, and both big parks restate the rule in their own words.

A long training line is a leash. If your dog needs distance rather than freedom, a fifteen or thirty foot line used in open park ground gives you most of the exercise benefit and keeps you inside the rule. It needs practice in a quiet spot first, and it needs your full attention on other users, but it is the honest workaround rather than a rule-bending one.

Structured exercise substitutes better than people expect. Scent work, recall practice on a line, and a long shaded walk at 6am cover a lot of what a dog park is doing for a dog. In this climate the walk is time-limited anyway.

And if you do want a genuine off-leash park regularly, the permit is worth it. $85 a year works out to about seven dollars a month for a 4.6-acre fenced space, which compares well with almost anything else you would spend on a dog. The reason to hesitate is not the price, it is whether your dog enjoys a busy gated park, and that is what the two-week trial is for.

Making two facilities work

A short honest list changes how you plan. Four things that help.

Decide whether the annual permit is worth it, using the two-week trial. $25 for a fortnight tells you whether your dog actually enjoys a busy gated park before you commit $85. Some dogs do not, and that is worth finding out cheaply.

Get the heartworm test done anyway. It is a City Bark requirement, and heartworm is endemic on the Gulf Coast. The Louisiana SPCA keeps a page on heartworm disease and treats prevention as standing care rather than a seasonal add-on. The test is worth having regardless of whether you join the park.

Use the early morning. City Bark opens at 5:30am six days a week and both big parks open at 5am. In a city where afternoon heat is the limiting factor for most of the year, that early opening is the most valuable amenity on this page.

Build a recall you can trust without treats. City Bark bans food inside the fence, which removes the tool most people rely on. Practise elsewhere before you need it there. Our notes on dog park etiquette and how to leash train a dog cover the groundwork.

If you are visiting rather than living here, the two-week permit and a base near City Park is the combination that works. Our New Orleans hotel directory and our roundup of pet-friendly hotels in New Orleans are the starting points, and our hotel stay with a dog packing list covers the rest.

Frequently asked questions

How many off-leash dog parks does New Orleans have? Two, from official sources. NOLA City Bark in City Park, which is permit-only, and the dog run at Wisner Playground, which is the only NORDC facility of 113 in its directory listing a dog run.

Is there a free dog park in New Orleans? Wisner Playground & Dog Run at 4877 Laurel St. is listed by NORDC with a dog run and a fence, and no fee is published. NORDC also publishes no hours or rules for it, so phone 504.658.3052 before you go.

Do you need a permit for a dog park in New Orleans? For NOLA City Bark, yes, without exception. For the Wisner dog run, NORDC does not publish a permit requirement, but nor does it state that none is needed.

How much is the New Orleans dog park permit? NOLA City Bark charges $85 a year for one dog, $125 for two, $150 for three, or $25 for a two-week temporary permit.

Can dogs be off leash in City Park New Orleans? Only inside NOLA City Bark. City Park's rules state pets must remain on leash at all times and are only allowed in open areas and the dog park.

Can dogs be off leash in Audubon Park? No. Audubon's rules state animals must always be securely leashed and remain in possession by the owner while in the park.

Sources

Facilities open and close. Ring before you drive, especially for Wisner, where nothing is published.