Dog Friendly City Guide: Los Gatos, California

In 1888 Jesuit priests and brothers from Santa Clara College built a winery on the hill above Los Gatos to help pay for the seminary they opened beside it the same year, and for nearly a century they made altar wine there. The stone cellars still stand on College Avenue, and on the slopes above them you can walk a dog along the stagecoach road that once ran over the hill to the little towns of Lexington and Alma, both now at the bottom of a reservoir.

Los Gatos is a small town at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains, on the southern edge of Silicon Valley, and that hill, the creek trail through the middle of town and a cellar door that takes dogs give a visitor with a dog three good reasons to stay a few days.

Flying In From Overseas

Bringing a dog into the United States is governed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and what it asks turns on the countries your dog has lived in or visited over the last six months. If every one of them is on the CDC's list of places without dog rabies, or at low risk of it, the checklist is short: the dog must be at least six months old, microchipped with a chip a universal scanner can read, healthy on arrival, and covered by a CDC Dog Import Form, whose receipt you can show on paper or on your phone.

Time spent in a country where dog rabies is a high risk brings far more paperwork, and a dog from one of those countries without a rabies vaccination will not be let in at all. The airport at San Jose, SJC, is about ten miles from town.

Where to Stay

The Los Gatos Garden Inn sits on East Main Street, a short walk from the shops, with rooms set around a patio, a courtyard looking over Main Street or a quiet garden, and executive suites with full kitchens for a longer stay.

It is an easy place to arrive with a dog, and a park across the street takes care of the first walk of the morning. Most of the rooms take a dog, of any size, and as many as you travel with, and the inn puts out food and water bowls and free treats. The dog comes with you to the patio, the lounge and the garden, the staff are trained to look after it, and the fee is $25 a night with nothing held as a deposit. Read the Los Gatos Garden Inn review.

The Toll House Hotel, now part of Hilton's Tapestry Collection, stands on South Santa Cruz Avenue in the middle of downtown. A number of its rooms take dogs up to 25 pounds, your dog can keep you company in the lounge and on the terrace, and the staff will point you to the best walks nearby. The fee runs from $75 to $150 for the stay, with no deposit. See the Toll House Hotel review.

Eat and Drink

A few doors along South Santa Cruz Avenue, Hapa's Brewing Company pours its own beer in a downtown taproom with a patio out front, and that patio is where the dog sits: well behaved, leashed dogs are allowed outside, while only service animals go into the taproom. The kitchen keeps things simple. A large Bavarian pretzel comes toasted, with butter and coarse salt, a warm cheddar sauce and stone mustard, for $9, and the sausage sandwich uses mild Italian sausage from the brewery's neighbours at the Los Gatos Meat Store. It is first come, first served, closed on Mondays, and no outside food goes on the patio.

Up the hill at 300 College Avenue, Testarossa Winery makes its Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in the Jesuits' old Novitiate Winery, which it calls the fourth oldest continuously operating winery in California. The original three-floor, gravity-flow winery of the 1880s is still used to make the wine, and the tasting room and Wine Bar 107 sit in the old stone cellars, reached through a stone cave. The winery says plainly that well-behaved dogs are welcome, and its Happy Dog Policy asks that they stay on a leash and under control at all times and that owners clean up after them. The tasting room is open every day from noon, and booking ahead is recommended.

For a longer afternoon, Byington sits 5.5 miles up Bear Creek Road in the Santa Cruz Mountains, on 85 acres with views over its Pinot Noir vines to Monterey Bay. Leashed dogs are welcome outdoors and inside the tasting room, and there is a hiking trail on the estate where they are welcome too. Keep the dog off the front lawns and the Wedding Hill lawn, and leave it with someone else if you join the winery tour, which dogs cannot go on.

St. Joseph's Hill and the Mountains

The walk that ties the town together starts about a mile from downtown. St. Joseph's Hill Open Space Preserve covers 273 acres on top of the 1,250-foot hill above the old Novitiate, with grassland, chaparral and oak woodland, and the remains of the Jesuits' abandoned vineyards still on the upper slopes.

The Jones Trail runs 2.2 miles from Novitiate Park to Lexington Reservoir, and much of it follows the old stagecoach road. From the Jones Trail, the Novitiate Trail leads to the Manzanita Trail, a 1.5-mile climb to the summit, where a bench looks out over the reservoir and the green serpentine rock shows along the path. Dogs are allowed here on the leash, but only on the trails the preserve map marks for them, so check it before you set off.

Beyond the reservoir the mountains open up. In Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve, more than 19,000 acres of the range, dogs are allowed on the leash on more than 12 miles of trail, among them the Limekiln, Priest Rock and Kennedy Trails; the Kennedy Trail starts from a small roadside parking area on Kennedy Road in Los Gatos. West of the town, El Sereno Open Space Preserve takes leashed dogs on the trails its map marks, and its Aquinas Trail runs three miles along the ridge with views over Lexington Reservoir, Sierra Azul and St. Joseph's Hill.

Closer to home, the Los Gatos Creek Trail follows the creek north out of town towards Campbell and San Jose, paved, with the lead on all the way. On the east side of town, the Town of Los Gatos keeps three open spaces in the hills, Heintz, Santa Rosa and Shannon Valley, all reached from Belgatos Park at the end of Belgatos Road, off Blossom Hill Road.

When the dog needs to run free, follow the creek trail north to the Los Gatos Creek County Dog Park at 1250 Dell Avenue in Campbell, between the casting ponds and San Tomas Expressway. It has a double-gated entry, separate fenced areas for large and small dogs, lawns with decomposed granite paths, logs and boulders to climb on and water fountains made for dogs. You can walk in from the trail, or park off Dell Avenue for $5.

Good to Know

The town's own parks welcome dogs on the lead, but no Los Gatos park allows a dog off it, under Town Code Section 4.40.005, and the town itself sends owners to the Campbell dog park instead. In Campbell's parks, dogs stay out of children's play areas and away from sports and special events, even on the lead.

The open space preserves have rules of their own. Keep the lead to six feet, or lock a retractable lead at six feet when other people are near; walk no more than three dogs each; and bag the waste and carry it out. Dogs are not allowed anywhere on Mount Umunhum in Sierra Azul, including its road and car parks, and that covers a dog waiting in the car. The Lexington Reservoir car park for St. Joseph's Hill charges a fee.

Neither hotel lets a dog stay alone in the room, so plan the day around a dog that comes with you, which in Los Gatos is easy enough.