Hundeauslaufgebiet Hakenfelde

Narrow Paths Through Spandauer Forst

This area is significantly less known than the large areas in the southwest, and that is precisely its advantage. The Hakenfelde dog exercise area is located in Spandauer Forst; access is via Hubertusstraße. If you turn left behind the entrance at Johannesstift, you will pass two wild enclosures, with Kuhlaketeich located between them. Instead of wide main paths, narrow trails wind through mixed forest and undergrowth here, which visibly engages dogs with a love for sniffing much more than an open meadow. The area has been accessible since the 1920s. With Hakenfelde, Pichelswerder, and the two areas in Kladow, Spandau offers around 140 hectares of forest exercise area, and the district needs it: With 2.52 registered dogs per 100 inhabitants, Spandau has the highest dog density in Berlin; the Mitte district is at the other end with 1.50. City-wide, 75,593 dogs are registered, and a significant portion of them are walked in the west and northwest of the city because that’s where the large forest areas are located.

Why Signs Are Decisive Here

In Berlin’s forests, an area is only considered a dog exercise area if it is marked as such by signs on the access paths. This sounds like administrative jargon, but in Hakenfelde, it has a very practical consequence: Kuhlaketeich is no longer part of the designated area, even if dogs still go into the water there. In Berlin, dogs are only allowed to swim in places explicitly marked as dog bathing areas, and there is no such designation here. Fenced areas and designated nature reserves are also excluded, meaning the two wild enclosures are taboo. In the rest of Spandauer Forst, leashes of no more than two meters are mandatory, and anyone who lets a dog run free outside the designated areas is acting unlawfully according to Paragraph 23 of the State Forest Law; the penalty can range up to 10,000 Euros. Within the designated area, the same rules apply as everywhere: the dog must be recallable at all times, digging holes is forbidden, chasing wildlife is punishable, and droppings must be removed from paths and parking lots.