A safe place for our beloved best friends to go to stretch their legs without their restraining leashes has been a long anticipated wait for the Jacksonville community. Thanks to the PetSafe Brand and their Bark for Your Park foundation and all of the votes Jacksonville received, every dog’s wish and every dog owner’s dream come true has been realized. When it came down to voting and needing the most votes to win the 100,000 dollar reward to build a dog park, the people of Jacksonville did not mess around. The small town stayed on top throughout the whole contest, determined to win this amazing opportunity for their community.

This was not the first time PetSafe Brand was bringing this amazing opportunity to communities, this was in fact their 5^th annual Bark for Your Park contest. Although Jacksonville came out on top as the winner and received 100,000 dollars to build a dog park in their town, they had to compete against sixteen other towns. The other runner-up towns received 25,000 dollars even though they did not win the grand prize. As most people know, the only way to win was through votes, and whoever had the most votes at the end of the contest won.

Jacksonville, does in fact, already have a small little fenced in area at Veterans Park were you can take your pups, but it’s not very big and not what the dogs of this community ideally need. Jacksonville will be building their dog park across the road from Nicholas Park and just east of the Pony Colt baseball field. The dog park will be a fenced-acre place for the dogs to run freely without being in any harm or concern for their safety. People that bring their dogs to the park are allowed in the fenced-in area where there will be benches and tables provided for sitting and resting, but all children must be accompanied by a parent or guardian to be able to be in the area for safety reasons. The dog park will also have access to the Mauvaisterre Lake.

All dogs should be allowed to have an area in the community they live in to be able to go  run around and interact with other dogs and people. The PetSafe Brand and their Bark for Your Park foundation is only worried about providing exactly that for all the dogs in the Jacksonville community.