Puppy-friendly parks: communities nationwide are putting paws before feet with the advent of dog parks

Parks & Recreation, Dec, 2003 by Maya Avrasin

Within the last decade, dog parks have emerged as a leading way for parks and recreation departments to reach out to the community. Whether they are extravagant or just a fenced-in plot of dirt, dog parks are increasingly seen not as luxuries, but necessities.

Ironically, one of the larget problems associated with dog parks is their popularity. When a small piece of land--one acre or less--becomes overwhelmed with foot and paw traffic, the grassy terrain usually turns into a muddy mess. The challenge facing many departments is how to solve the problem without further burdening their budget.

East District Administrator Glenn Dixon, in Tucson, Ariz., solved his traffic problem by installing irrigation systems and on-site water-runoff collection centers, and performing constant maintenance. "You can make them, I guess, be a pain for you, but in our community, we chose to make it low-key," says Dixon.

Tucson's first dog park was created in 2000 using a scrap of land leftover from an adjoining park. The city allocated $14,000 for the fencing and doggie fountains, and appointed a citizen-based association to oversee the park. "In essence, we put up a fence, put up a sign and said we were open for business," Dixon says.

Six months later, dust had become an issue for the primarily dirt-covered area, and the city installed an irrigation system to calm the clouds. Since then, the association raised funds to seed the area with grass and maintains the policing of it to ensure proper clean-up of dog poop. "The only place you don't have to worry about dog droppings is in the dog park," comments Dixon.

What was initially a trial run is now becoming an expected trend for Tucson. Because of the success of its first dog park, which lowered the occurrences of off-leash dogs terrorizing neighborhoods and ball fields, Tucson renovated two more existing parks for dog-only use, and is embarking on two new dog parks next year. "It's become something that people expect," Dixon says.

While the cost for" each new park--$85,000--staggers over the total price of renovating the three existing dog parks, Dixon says the up-front cost is relative compared to the long-term savings once the parks open. After spending the money for fencing, infrastructure and irrigation, the city does not allocate much more money annually for the upkeep, because the maintenance of the dog parks--mowing, watering and grounds keep--are similar to the upkeep of a soccer field.

"We already had the money in the mowing, we already had the water in the budget, there wasn't any significant maintenance," Dixon says. "It's just a little more aggressive watering."

The Urban Dilemma

While much of Tucson's population of 486,000 is contained in cul-de-sac pockets, in other, more urbanized locales, a simple plot of land will not do.

Arlington County, in Northern Virginia, began its affair with dog parks in the mid 1980s with the opening of the Utah Park dog area--a 12,000-square-foot, fenced-in, primarily dirt ground abutting a park. Utah Park's dog area was originally grass, but because of constant wear on the surface, it soon became barren. The county parks department tried to resod the area, but the constant traffic tore up the grass.

"Finding the appropriate surface is the toughest thing," says Howard Hudgins, Arlington County Parks Service Area manager. "It's just not possible with public maintenance funds."

When it came time to decide on a surface for the dog area, the Parks Department gave the surrounding community a choice between stone dust or mulch. The residents chose the former, and the department covered the surface with about four inches of the compacted decomposed granite, which looks like chunky, damp sand, but refuses to absorb rain. (Nor does it retain the smell of dog urine.)

The new surface was successful for the dog area, and Arlington County soon added several more dog parks within its various districts. Now it has seven clog parks, ranging from two and one-half acres in size to its smallest dog area--the Utah Park dog area. Utah Park also happens to be the only one with the decomposed granite surface, because it is the only one that is level enough to spread the stone dust around.

The other parks are composed of mulch, grass and wood chips, because they have too many hills for the gravel-like texture to tie used. "It's cheap, and mulch will stay put on a gentle slope," Hudgins says, adding that if decomposed granite is used, a proper drainage system must be installed prior to topping; otherwise the stone dust might get caught in the drainage basin causing flooding alter a rain. "It's really important to fix your drainage before you put any surface down," he says.

"There's no perfect surface," he adds. On a flat surface, stone dust, wood chips or grass would work, but grass is easily killed from foot traffic, and stone dust and wood chips scatter frequently, Hudgins says. On hilly surfaces, mulch mattes together well on inclines, but it is prone to spilling onto sidewalks and roadways, is not aesthetically pleasing; tends to get caught in drainage systems and absorbs urine.