How to find your municipality's real, official off-leash area map

Search online for “off-leash dog area [your town]” and you’ll get a pile of results: blogs, dog apps, forum posts, and sometimes the municipality itself. The problem is that the first category regularly copies from each other, is years out of date, or names an area that’s since been discontinued. We ran into this ourselves while building GoPuppy, and eventually found a more reliable source than the average municipal webpage: the official designation decision.

Why a municipal webpage sometimes isn’t enough

A municipality usually publishes its dog policy in two places: an informative webpage in plain language, and a formal designation decision (aanwijzingsbesluit), the legal text in which the local council precisely sets out which areas are off-leash zones, by name and sometimes with map coordinates. The two don’t always match.

We discovered this ourselves with the Elsenburgerbos in Rijswijk. The municipality’s general webpage simply listed the forest as “off-leash area”, nothing more. The newest official implementation regulation (4 March 2025) turned out to be more precise: the whole forest is an off-leash area, except for a small field in front of the pond, which remains off-limits. Without that decision, we’d have missed that exception.

Two kinds of official sources

1. The designation decision itself, via CVDR

Every Dutch municipality publishes its legally binding regulations on lokaleregelgeving.overheid.nl (the CVDR, the Central Registry for Local Regulations). Search there for “aanwijzingsbesluit hondenlosloopgebied [municipality]” or “aanwijsbesluit hondenbeleid [municipality]”. Watch for two things:

• The validity date. Decisions get replaced; the page shows whether a decision is still “in force” or has already been withdrawn by a newer version.
• What an area exactly covers, and what it doesn’t. For instance, Pijnacker-Nootdorp’s decision designates “Hondenbos Dobbeplas” by name as an off-leash area, while the beach and shore strip of that very same lake, the Dobbeplas, are off-limits zones instead, three different rules at one location.

2. The municipality’s own interactive map

More and more municipalities put their dog map online as a genuine, queryable dataset, not just a picture. A few examples we used ourselves:

• Amsterdam: maps.amsterdam.nl/honden shows off-leash, prohibited, and special-rule areas, including seasonal rules where they apply.
• Rotterdam: the Hondenkaart distinguishes off-leash areas, walking zones (leash required but no clean-up duty), and prohibited areas, by street and neighbourhood.
• Rijswijk: rijswijk.nl/honden-uitlaten lists more than 30 off-leash areas, with a digital map for the exact boundaries.

If your municipality’s map doesn’t work right away, there’s usually a link to a separate map portal (often via an external GIS provider). Try searching “[municipality] data portal dogs” or “[municipality] dog map” in that case.

What if your municipality has neither?

Some municipalities have only a short text page, with no map or formal decision. In that case, the most reliable next step turned out to simply be calling or emailing the municipal contact point, more of a hassle than a map, but more reliable than copying an outdated blog post. We did this ourselves too: for several places in this guide, despite extensive searching, we couldn’t find official confirmation, and we deliberately chose not to add them to GoPuppy, better a gap in our database than an invented fact.

In short

1. First look for your municipality’s ordinary information page on dogs.
2. Then look for the designation decision on lokaleregelgeving.overheid.nl. Check whether it’s still in force.
3. If the municipality has a digital map, use it for the exact boundaries.
4. Do the information page and the decision disagree? The decision is the legally binding version.
5. Found none of this? Call the municipality, or check the signs on site.

Know an off-leash dog area confirmed by an official source that isn’t on GoPuppy yet? Add the place and feel free to mention your source, that makes checking it much faster. In the meantime, browse the full overview of off-leash areas already on GoPuppy.