Dog Friendly City Guide: Palo Alto, California

On a Tuesday your dog can walk with you into the hills at Foothills Nature Preserve, 1,400 acres of chaparral, woodland and open fields above Palo Alto. On Saturday the same gate is closed to it. The city lets dogs into its hill preserve on weekdays only, never at weekends or on city holidays, and that one rule is the best place to start planning a visit.

Palo Alto is the Silicon Valley city that runs from the tidal marshes of San Francisco Bay up into the foothills, with a downtown of patios and parklets in between. It keeps dogs on the lead almost everywhere and gives them a great deal of country to walk in.

Arriving From Abroad

A dog flying in from abroad must meet the rules of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Everything depends on the countries your dog has visited in the half year before it lands. A dog coming from a country the CDC counts as rabies free or low risk must be at least six months old, look healthy on arrival and carry a microchip that a universal scanner can read, and it needs a receipt for its own CDC Dog Import Form, one form for every dog.

Time spent in a country the CDC lists as high risk for rabies in that half year means a longer route, and an unvaccinated dog from one will be turned away.

Where to Stay

The best stay for a dog is a few miles south, in Mountain View. The Ameswell Hotel at 800 Moffett Boulevard is an independent hotel of 255 rooms that takes its cue from its neighbour, NASA's Ames Research Center, and calls itself the greenest hotel in Silicon Valley, with solar panels powering its lights and almost all single-use plastic gone.

Your dog arrives to bowls, treats and a toy, and is welcome on the lawn, the terrace, around the Flyby café and on the outdoor patio at Roger, the hotel's bar and restaurant, which keeps a menu for dogs. Every year it throws Barks & Boos, a pet parade and costume contest with adoptable dogs from Pets in Need, the local rescue the hotel supports. The fee is $75 a stay for each dog, up to two dogs of 75 lb or less, with no deposit. Read the Ameswell review.

Downtown, el Prado at 520 Cowper Street hides 62 rooms behind a Spanish-style front in downtown Palo Alto; its name means the meadow. It goes further than most for a dog: a plush bed, bowls and treats on arrival, a room-service menu written for dogs, bags for the walk, and a concierge who will book a local groomer. Staff hand you a map of the walks nearby, with Rinconada Park about a mile off. Dogs sit with you in the courtyard and the second-floor lounge. The fee is $75, for up to two dogs of up to 75 lb, and there is no deposit. See the el Prado review.

Dinah's Garden Hotel at 4261 El Camino Real has been family owned since 1957, and its 129 rooms sit around tropical gardens of koi ponds, lagoons, fountains, gazebos and stone sculpture. A dog can follow you almost everywhere here: the garden, the terrace, the lounge, the bar and the restaurant. The two restaurants on site are Dinah's Poolside and The Sea by Alexander's Steakhouse.

The hotel's own pet policy sets a $75 fee for a stay of one to four days, with another $75 from the fifth, and takes up to two dogs of up to 50 lb in its designated rooms. Read the Dinah's review.

The Bay

The Baylands Nature Preserve is the walk Palo Alto is proudest of. It covers 1,940 acres of tidal and freshwater marsh between Mountain View and East Palo Alto, with about 15 miles of trail, and it is a stopping place on the Pacific Flyway and one of the best places for birds on the West Coast. The city bought its first 40 acres of marshland in 1921 and made the area parkland in 1968.

The entrance is at 2775 Embarcadero Road, the Duck Pond and the Lucy Evans interpretive centre are among its landmarks, and the North Bayfront Loop takes you out along the water. Dogs stay on the lead at all times, and the gates open at 8 in the morning and close by a time set to the sunset.

The Hills

Pearson-Arastradero Preserve is open to dogs every day of the week. It has 10.25 miles of trail across rolling grassland and evergreen woods, climbing from 275 feet to 775, and you share them with walkers, cyclists, riders, deer, bobcats and coyotes. The Redtail Loop is a good first circuit, and Arastradero Lake is about twenty minutes on foot from the car park. Some 3.6 miles close after heavy rain, so a wet winter means shorter routes.

Higher still, Foothills Nature Preserve at 3300 Page Mill Road runs through chaparral, woodland, fields and streams to a lake, with views across the Bay Area. It costs $6 for a car and nothing on foot or by bike, and it opens at 8 in the morning. For dogs it is a weekday outing only.

Off the Lead

Palo Alto keeps four fenced dog areas, and they are the only places in the city a dog may run free. Peers Park has 0.84 acres of wood mulch, opened in 2018, with Adirondack chairs, shade, a long run for chasing a ball and a separate area for dogs of 25 lb and under. Mitchell Park's dog park was rebuilt and enlarged in January 2025, with its own small dog area, Hoover Park has a shady 0.14 acres, and Greer Park a small pen of 0.06. All four open from 7 in the morning to 9 at night, and a dog arrives and leaves on the lead, licensed and vaccinated, with its tags on.

For open ground, drive up Highway 280 to Pulgas Ridge, a Midpeninsula open space preserve where dogs may go off the lead in a 17.5-acre area in the middle of the preserve, with six miles of trail through cool canyons to a ridge top looking over the bay.

In Mountain View, near the Ameswell, the Stevens Creek Trail takes dogs on a short lead from El Camino Real north to the Crittenden Lane trailhead.

Patios and Tables

St. Michael's Alley at 140 Homer Avenue opened in 1959 as a coffee house, named after the London alley where that city's first coffee house opened in 1652, and in the beat years it helped launch Joan Baez, the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. Today it serves seasonal California cooking on its patio and in its bar and dining rooms, Tuesday to Sunday evenings.

On Ramona Street, Nola fills the Pedro de Lemos building of 1908 with eight dining rooms, an oyster bar, an open-air courtyard, a parklet on the street and one of the largest collections of Southern folk art in the country. It is closed on Mondays. Round the corner, Vino Locale pours wine in a Victorian house of 1906 at 431 Kipling Street; dogs sit with you on the front patio, which is where happy hour is held from 3 to 5.30, and the menu ends with doggie snacks, two pieces of doggie bacon and a doggie kabob for $3.

Gott's Roadside, the James Beard award-winning roadside diner that began on Highway 29 in the Napa Valley, has a Palo Alto branch at 855 El Camino Real. California health code keeps all but service animals indoors, but a leashed, well-behaved dog is welcome on the patio. On California Avenue, Palo Alto Sol cooks the food of Puebla in central Mexico and takes no reservations on Friday or Saturday nights.

Good to Know

Outside the four dog areas, every dog in Palo Alto is on a lead, by city ordinance on streets, pavements and in parks, and on the open space preserves that lead may be no longer than six feet. Inside the fences the limit is three dogs to a handler, and food and alcohol stay outside.

There is no way round the Foothills rule: the city forbids leaving a dog in the car or tied up outside the preserve while you walk. Across the city line, Shoreline at Mountain View is closed to dogs to protect its burrowing owls and other protected wildlife, so the Stevens Creek Trail stops short of it at Crittenden Lane; the city's own dog park sits on North Road just outside Shoreline's main entrance.

All three hotels ask that your dog is never left on its own in the room, so build the day around having it with you. Bring your own dog bed to the Ameswell and Dinah's, and ask for one of the dog rooms when you book at either.

On a clear morning on the Baylands levee, with marsh on one side, open bay on the other and the dog nosing ahead along the path, Palo Alto shows you why it kept so much of its edge wild.