Dog lovers eager to see areas in City parks where Fido could ditch the leash and freely express the full glory of his doggiehood have been woofing about it for years.

Apparently, the City’s Parks Board has wagged its tail at the idea, too.

On Monday, Daryl Faber, director of Auburn Parks, Arts & Recreation, met with members of the Planning and Community Development Committee to see where they stood as to actually setting up three to four trial off-leash areas in existing parks.

And they said go for it.

For weeks, parks staff have scouted out potential sites in park settings where the City could authorize dogs to be off-leash.

It’s not about building a dog park, Faber said, because the City doesn’t have any land for that.

“I want to stress that these are pilot sites. The City of Victoria did this four or five years ago. They tested sites for a year to see how they worked, analyzed the sites, and if things didn’t work, they could potentially go to another site and so on,” Faber said. “We’re not building an off-leash dog park where a City gets 10 new acres, and it’s just built by design to be a park. We didn’t find any of those opportunities. What we found were areas of parks that were under used, and we thought had some real strengths in relation to off-leash areas.”

Having looked at eight to 10 potential sites, staff then ranked the top three or four. Faber presented these roughly one acre, underused areas within present sites to committee members:

• Auburndale Park on Lea Hill: Not only is the area under consideration under used but also buffered between the off-leash area and the nearest neighbor. But it lacks bathrooms and would require additional parking. The neighborhood would also have to buy into the idea.

• Roegner Park: This site offers river access, bathrooms and is expandable. Plus, many dog owners already use the White River Trail to walk their dogs. On the other hand, parking is limited, and the City would probably have to approach Auburn Riverside High School about parking.

• Isaac Evans Park: The City is looking at an area on south end of the park near the pump station. On the plus side, there is neighboring property to worry about, it is also expandable to more than an acre, and there is a restroom at the north end of the park. But the parking lot would have to be expanded.

• Lakeland Hills Park: It would serve the entire Lakeland Hills community and use an underdeveloped bit of property. There is also onlyl one adjacent homeowner to work with. On the down side, it only about a half-acre site, there is no room to expand, it offers limited parking and there are no bathrooms.

Most, but not all, of the sites would require some level of fencing, he said, just to keep the dogs separate from the rest of the parks.

“There’d be a low cost for fencing, but we’re not looking at putting in a huge amount of infrastructure, like maybe you would at a dog park, where you’d have drinking fountains and restrooms,” Faber said. “We’re just talking about dogs running off leash and maybe catching a Frisbee or something.

“If the committee wants us to give these sites a shot, we could pull this off by the end of the year,” Faber added. “We’re waiting to see which sites get the go-ahead and whether any sites pose concerns. Our task to now has been to look at the parks and see which meet the criteria.”