NORTHAMPTON — Give, touch, wait, OK.

Winnie, a gray poodle mix with fluffy ears and a puff at the end of her tail, looks at her owner Naomi Rosenberg with big, excited eyes. She had followed each command from Rosenberg enthusiastically to get to her prize: the tennis ball she found in tall grass at Smith Professional Agricultural Fields. A member of her pack, a golden retriever mix named Doug, is too busy smelling the grass to notice.

Rosenberg and Kelli Wohlers, Doug’s caretaker, have visited “Northampton’s unofficial dog park” daily with the rest of their dog parent friend group for the past four years. One dog owner texts a six-person group, including Rosenberg and Wohlers, to meet at the fields, and whoever is available brings their pup to run in the open fields, swim in the creek and chase small wildlife in the forest. It’s a dog’s paradise.

Except Smith Professional Agricultural Fields isn’t a dog park. It’s a 282-acre track of land owned by the state, leased by the city and maintained by Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School.

The school in 2015 mandated that dogs be leashed and stay on the trail to prevent damage to the agricultural fields and control animal feces from contaminating the creek. Yet since leash laws are not enforced at the fields, pet owners still bring their dogs to play and run freely, as they have for years prior. While many dogs who arrive at the park go on their adventures without much trouble, the lack of observance to the leash law still has created issues.

“(Smith Professional Agricultural Fields) is where most of the violations occur,” Northampton’s Animal Control Officer Dawn Ubelaker said. “Smith Vocational High School has their farm program, and they have livestock in those fields and pens. A couple months ago, a husky, who’s normally very good about voice control, went into husky mode and attacked four baby goats in a pen. Two had life-threatening injuries.”

Smith Professional Agricultural Fields isn’t the only place in Hampshire County deemed an unofficial dog park: Dufresne Park in Granby, Puffer Pond’s “Dog Beach” in Amherst and Buttery Brook Park in South Hadley all see a fair share of unleashed dogs despite mandating leashes.

The issue of unleashed dogs arose again this summer when Granby and South Hadley discussed two different dog-related incidents in public spaces. In Granby, a resident was hurt by an unleashed dog in Dufresne Park, and in South Hadley, a dog attack occurred at Buttery Brook Park when the dog’s leash slipped out of the owner’s hand.

Ubelaker said leash law enforcement is difficult, as animal control officers have a long list of responsibilities that leave little time to patrol popular trails for offenders. The responsibility therefore falls to dog owners, who either abide by the rules, or train their dog to come when called and hope it will listen.

“When you think about taking your dog off leash, you’re also thinking about how much you want to tolerate in terms of being embarrassed when your dog misbehaves, having to pay for vet bills, getting a societal reputation for dog aggression,” said Elise Gouge, dog behavior specialist and owner of Pet Behavior Consulting in Granby. “I have lots of people that come to me and say, ‘There’s this one woman, she’s got these two dogs, and they’re always here and attacking everybody. I just wish she would stop going.’”

Massachusetts state law requires all dogs be leashed in public spaces, but the details in the leash law vary between each cities and towns.

In Hampshire County, more rural towns with lots of open space, like Granby or Cummington, simply require a dog to be within sight and under voice command, meaning the dog will return when its name is called. Other municipalities, like Northampton or Amherst, mandate a leash of a certain quality or length that properly restrains a dog.

All leash laws prohibit dogs from venturing onto private property without permission.

“A lot of dog owners are not worried about their dog because they have it under control, but it’s not about the individual. Our ordinances are in place for the safety of the whole community,” Ubelaker said.

Leash laws, she added, exist to protect people, wildlife and dogs from unpredictable dangers, whether it’s a dog fight, a car zooming by on the road or even an excited pup who loses control of its motions. Gouge adds that dogs can run onto frozen ponds and fall through the ice or meet a particularly angry porcupine or skunk and end up injured.

“I think that people, a lot of times, take their dogs on the trail because it’s beautiful,” she said. “They want to walk, they want their dog to run, and like to have that experience. The fact that the dog isn’t trained, doesn’t come when called, and possibly has pretty poor reactions when they see other dogs or people, gets pushed to the wayside.”

Dog owners who perceive their dogs as friendly or well-trained often feel safe letting their dog off leash on leash-mandated trails, Ubelaker said, but other people or dogs who are not privy to a strange animal’s behaviors may feel threatened. The logic, Gouge added, goes the other way: the owner of the friendly dog cannot predict the behavior of a strange dog, and if that strange dog is reactive — meaning it overreacts with aggression to a person or dog — a dog fight can break out.

“I would say at least 75% of my clients have dog-reactive dogs,” Gouge said. “I would say at least 50% of those dogs developed dog reactivity as a reaction to getting nailed, attacked, or had a bad altercation at one of those places where people wanted to walk their dog off leash.”

While leashes in public spaces remain a pinnacle of responsible dog ownership, so, too, is time off leash. Western Mass Dog Training owner and founder Laurie Johnson said the freedom of off-leash play is still important for dogs, since leashes restrict an animal’s movement and ability to engage in instinctual play, exploration and exercise, but humans need to prepare for the risks that come with this freedom. Training is a huge part of this preparation, from rehabilitating reactive dogs before letting them off leash to instilling basic recall in pets.

“We just expect our dogs to be at our beckon and call, that they should just come back becasue we say so,” Johnson said. “I like to say recall is a very expensive request of a dog, so you have to make it worth their while. You have to give them rewards and games so that when they come back to you, they get something great.”

Gouge suggests training a dog’s recall by planting distractions in an open space and calling it over, rewarding with treats when the dog follows the command. Distractions can be food, stuffed animals, toys or people. When a dog comes when called, add moving distractions to mimic the motion of animals running or dogs playing. People without backyards or access to open spaces can rent spaces through Sniff Spot, which works like an Airbnb for training areas.

Training dogs for off-leash interactions also involves socializing dogs as puppies, Johnson said, to teach them early how to engage with other dogs, respect boundaries and read another dog’s behavior. Gouge noted that the window to socialize dogs closes around 16 to 20 weeks, so the sooner a dog is socialized, the better. Both dog experts say that socialization of dogs should occur in a controlled environment with only a few dogs that will create a positive experience for the puppy.

“Owners are in a tough spot because there isn’t a lot of socialization services,” Johnson said. “Many doggy day cares have a lot of dogs and they don’t have professional trainers to guide dogs to communicate with each other. You just have to shop around and know how they work with the dogs.”

Even just spending time with your dog to build a relationship between human and animal, Johnson added, is key to preparing for an off-leash walk. It helps entice pups to re turn when called and it gives owners time to lear n to read a dog’s body language, which can indicate whe n an interaction with anoth er dog is about to go awry.

“What I really think would be great is if people train their dogs specifically for off-leash behavior, walks, interactions and play,” Gouge said, “so when they go to a place like a park, the owner knows exactly what the dog is going to do when they need to call their dog.”

Emilee Klein can be reached at eklein@gazettenet.com.