Waterton Lakes shares its southern boundary with Glacier National Park. Together they form the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. In stark contrast to Glacier which gets a 1-paw rating for having no dog friendly trails, Waterton gets a 4-paw rating. Dogs are welcome on all trails, which is true of all the Canadian Parks. Another thing to keep in mind at Canadian Parks is that they don’t always list all the trails on their maps. This allows you to discover them yourself. A good source of intel is from interacting with the locals, in case you don’t know it Canadians are really nice people and Canadian isn’t too hard to understand, eh. We were directed to some incredible views by just talking with people.
Bears, bears and more bears
There are lots of bears, we saw bears everyday. They sit on the side of the road eating, they sit in the campgrounds eating, they walk on the bike paths looking for things to eat, berries mostly, not cyclists. People don’t freak out about it, they all just get along. You keep your campsite clean and the bears won’t bother it. But it is a good idea to have bear spray with you.
About that bear spray
A short but steep hike is Bear’s Hump trail. This trail starts at the information center and climbs 738 ft in less than 2 miles to provide a panoramic view of Waterton Valley. A few hundred yards into the hike, Martok, our Great Dane, starts going nuts, jumping, whining and pulling. We figure there must be a dog in front of us. Nope, it was a bear. Our Canadian friends who were hiking with us have never seen a bear on this trail in the 10 years they have been hiking it. In fact at the start we told them we forgot our bear spray, they said we wouldn’t see any bears here. Well the bear quickly left the path and disappeared. After about a dozen people went by us we figured it was safe, as we should at least be able to run faster than some of them. Don’t worry, we did let the people walking by know we saw a bear but most didn’t seem to be concerned.
Who put this town in the middle of the park?
A curious thing about Canadian National Parks compared with American Parks is that some of them have towns. Not just a place with a hotel, gift shop and restaurant but lots of hotels, lots of restaurants, stores, private homes, playgrounds, schools, gas stations and grocery stores. Oddly enough, while the trails are dog friendly most of the eating places are not, so keep that in mind.
While in town with your dog be sure to stay clear of any deer. Apparently some of the town deer will attack without provocation and can injure or kill a dog.
North American International dog travel
Crossing either the northern or southern border of the continental US with a dog is easy to do. The easiest way is to get your veterinarian to provide you with a health certificate.
Our experiences
Canada basically wants proof of rabies vaccination. I’ve heard that a rabies certificate can be used in place of a health certificate. We just handed the health certificate with our passports and that seemed to be sufficient. On the way out of Canada the US agent didn’t even know what the health certificate was and had no interest in it at all.
We never had our paperwork checked on the way into Mexico. Our dog’s paperwork has never been checked on the way out of Mexico. We were once asked, in a very official sounding way, to roll the back window down. The agent had a Saint Bernard at home and wanted to say ‘hi’ to our Danes before letting us back into the country.
Your results may vary
