Dog parks generate joy. Anyone who’s visited these areas dedicated to free-ranging canines in Arkansas and across the country can’t help but know this.
Dogs run, tumble, chase tennis balls, splash in kiddie pools, play tag, stage mock battles, and bring smiles to the faces of everyone who sees them. Owners instantly strike up conversations with each other about their pets’ cuteness, habits, histories, and talents.
There have been plenty of times we’ve taken our small terriers to dog parks when we weren’t in the best of moods. That changes at the sight of familiar canine pals like Debbie Milam’s beautiful Tulip as she pursues squirrels or Michael Shepherd’s adorable green-eyed dachshund terrier mix Nola snuffling at the base of a huge shade tree—not to mention new dogs, from Great Danes to feisty Chihuahuas, that show up to enjoy romping off-leash for a while.
Paws Park, which opened May 22, 2004, is there because Milam, the late Nancy Ledbetter, and other volunteers, with the guidance of the city’s then-parks and recreation director Bryan Day and city manager Bruce Moore, raised the money to design and build it.
A high point was our visit last fall when a dog owner brought along a small drone, steering it to rise and fall over a pack of astonished dogs. Stunned at first, they periodically burst into bark mode, especially when the drone lowered. Dealing with drones was obviously not in their areas of expertise, but they probably thought their combined barkage ran the airborne invader off.
The fun was in failure last month when two popular local dog parks went underwater. As the Arkansas River flooded, so did these havens for owners and pets.
The gushing river left most of Burns Park south of Interstate 40—as well as much of the Arkansas River Trail—covered with dirty water and forced its closure beginning the last week of May. The river reached a crest of 29.71 feet in central Arkansas June 5.
Smack in the middle of this mess is Burns Park’s expansive dog park, with areas for little, medium and large dogs.
The damage was considerable—enough to make North Little Rock Parks and Recreation director Terry Hartwick decide that enough was enough.
“I’m tired of fighting a losing battle,” Hartwick told this newspaper after surveying the park, which opened in 2003, during the last week of June. “The downed trees look like pickup sticks. There’s alligator gar and snakes and turtles all stuck in the fences. You can’t tell it’s even a fence. It’s just a mess of debris.”
He’s planning on relocating the low-lying park to higher ground. “It’s always constantly wet,” he said in a story by colleague Jake Sandlin. “I have more people call me about taking their dogs out there when they’re clean, and when they bring them back home they have to give them a bath.
“I can have [a new park] built and put in before we could ever get this [current] one cleaned up.”
In the running: “Right past the tennis center, and before you get to the softball complex, there’s a big wooded area with shade trees that has a bathroom close by and there’s ample parking,” he said, and is also considering adding two more dog parks to North Little Rock, probably on the city’s east end and downtown.
Little Rock’s Paws Park cleanup got lots of help from dozens of volunteers, including the University of Arkansas Little Rock men’s and women’s basketball teams as well as the university’s athletic director Chasse Conque. They put all that athletic talent to work raking, shoveling, and hauling logs, debris, branches, and rocks out of the area.
PuroClean of Little Rock, a water damage restoration service, used a formidable weapon called the ColdJet Dry Ice Blaster to remove messy river bottom from the park’s chain-link fence, an effort that burned through about 6,000 pounds of dry ice.
Three dump-truck loads of leaves, dirt and branches were hauled off.
The paved walkways have been cleared, and although much of the grass was washed away, most of the trees that make this two-acre space shady and comfortable on even the hottest days are still there.
Karen Sykes, volunteer coordinator for the city of Little Rock, was happy to see so many members of the community pitch in. “We have two dog parks [the other is MacArthur Unleashed Dog Park near the Arkansas Arts Center], and this one has been here longer,” she told the newspaper.
“A lot of people here actually use the parks … who doesn’t love taking their dogs to the park?”
Karen Martin is senior editor of Perspective.
kmartin@arkansasonline.com