After staging a substantial fundraising effort to successfully bring a dog park to town this spring, the Guilford Dog Park Committee and Parks & Recreation Department recently received a $10,000 grant for additional improvements to the popular park.

The dog park, located on Nut Plains Road, opened in spring 2016 after the Planning & Zoning Commission (PZC) approved 1.5 acres for the park in December 2015. Despite needing local government approval, the park expenses and maintenance are not covered by the town.

To open the park, the community raised $44,000 through fundraising events and campaigns, according to Guilford Dog Park Committee leading member Catherine Kiernan Marganski. Those funds helped purchase a fence for the park as well as other necessities.

Now with the $10,000 grant from Pet Safe, a for-profit company that sells products for pets, Kiernan Marganski said the park committee can start work on additional improvements to the park, including making it handicap accessible.

“We want a paved path going around the inside of the park so that elderly, handicapped people in wheelchairs, or anyone can walk, jog, etc., on this path while their dog is off leash,” she said. “In one of our first meetings, a young man in a wheelchair came and said he always wanted a dog and having an off leash area would be a great help with exercising his future dog. Right now our entire park is covered with wood chips, making wheelchair use very hard.”

The paved path, which the committee hopes to install this spring, is estimated to cost $15,000. Kiernan Marganski said the committee is using this winter to raise the additional needed funds.

“We currently have about $7,000 left over in our funds, but we want to keep that in case we ever had an emergency [such as a] tree falling on the fence,” she said. “So we plan on fundraising the $5,000. We will be having one of our world-famous ‘Yappy Hours’ and some other events. These will be during the winter months and also double as an evening to socialize with the dog owners in town.”

Additionally bricks are still available for purchase through the Parks & Recreation Department, which oversees all activity at the dog park. Director Rick Maynard said the park has been successful thus far.

“The park is getting tremendous use,” he said. “It is not unusual for there to be 30 dogs there with their people. I know our park ranger said when he goes to lock up there are still people there and he has gone at 6:30 in the morning to open up and there are cars right behind him waiting to go in.”

Overall, Kiernan Marganski said a great community has formed at the dog park.

“During the prime times it is not uncommon to see 30 to 40 dogs playing and during non-popular times it seems like there is always someone there,” she said. “I have actually never visited the park and had no other dogs there. I myself have met so many new friends there and we often joke that the ‘humans’ at the park sometimes enjoy it more than the dogs.”

For more information on the Guilford Dog Park, visit www.guilforddogpark.com.