Thank you to all of the volunteers who have been locking and unlocking Kingsman Dog Park, especially Brittany Kramer and Allie Hagan, who are coordinating the schedule. Hill Hounds has additional roles for which we need park users to volunteer.

While Kingsman Dog Park is a city park, dog park partner groups are expected to take on a lot of responsibility. This culture may change in the future, but when leaders in the DC dog owner community were negotiating the terms of the laws and budget to create official DC dog parks in 2007, they were willing to agree to a lot of responsibility for the parks in order to get the rules passed. That was because it took many years of advocacy by DC dog owners to even get to the point of the city government considering laws and a budget for official dog parks. And when members of the Hill Hounds Steering Committee applied for Kingsman Dog Park in early 2008, we knew that once the park was built, the awesome dog owners of the neighborhood (that's you!) would step up to help out.

If you can volunteer for any of these roles, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Park Maintenance Volunteers and Park Maintenance Coordinator- While the Department of Parks and Recreation picks up the trash from the park and will do major repairs like resurfacing, Hill Hounds is responsible for the rest of the day-to-day park maintenance. The maintenance supplies are kept in the locked plastic chest at the park.

The Coordinator will:

• order supplies, such as dog poop bags, trash bags and sanitary spray, and be reimbursed with Hill Hounds funds in a timely manner
• coordinate a schedule for maintenance volunteers to hose down the surface of the dog park with sanitary spray once a week between October and May and twice a week between June and September
• coordinate a schedule for maintenance volunteers to rake the surface of the park at least once a month
• coordinate a dog park clean up day every three months where the greater Hill Hounds membership will help do larger clean up & maintenance tasks, like painting over graffiti or planting shrubs

The Volunteers will:

• check on day to day items when they visit the park, like making sure there are bags in the poop bag dispenser and making sure any fliers posted on the community bulletin board (which DPR will be getting installed soon) are appropriate
• participate in hosing down and raking the surface as scheduled by the Coordinator (see above)

Hill Hounds Secretary- The Hill Hounds Steering Committee needs an organized individual to join as Secretary. The Secretary's main duty will be fulfilling our reporting requirements to DPR.

• Hill Hounds must send DPR notes from our Annual Meeting, which the Secretary will take and send.
• Hill Hounds must also send DPR quarterly reports on activities at the park and our fundraising that quarter. Therefore the Secretary will keep track of the dates and details of anything significant that happens at the park, such as our quarterly clean ups, and compile that info with fundraising info (provided by the Hill Hounds Treasurer) into DPR's quarterly report form every three months and send it to them.

Now that Kingsman Dog Park is open, we want to give you some tips and reminders for its use.

1. With the double-gated entry, please NEVER open the main gate when there is an unleashed dog in the entry area. Please wait until the owner of the dog in the entry area has had a chance to re-leash him or her. 

2. Please try to keep your dogs from forming a "welcome committee" to those entering the park. There have been a few incidences of aggression between those inside and those trying to enter. Things are calmer once everyone is inside and not feeling cornered or intruded upon.

3. We have a small dog area (gate on the right of the entry area) and a main play area (gate on the left of the entry area). All dogs are welcome in the main play area, regardless of size. But if your dog is small enough to get picked on by larger dogs, is older and needs a more tame play environment, etc, the small dog area is there for your use.

4. Be sure all dogs remain on-leash until inside the double-gated area. The walkway from the D Street sidewalk is an entrance to the dog park, the playing field and the basketball court. Therefore, we need to be curteous to the users of these other resources and keep our dogs on-leash when we're not in the park.

5. Please make sure to comply with the Department of Parks and Recreation Dog Park Rules.

If you've noticed other things that we should give tips on, feel free to contact the steering committee at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Kingsman Dog Park will open to the public at 5:00 pm this Friday, March 25th. To celebrate, please join us for an informal get-together from 5-7 pm at the new park. We invite everyone to come by, take a look around, play a little fetch and make some new friends from the neighborhood. Members of the Hill Hounds Steering Committee will be there to answer questions about the park and to hand out free treats to your very patient pooches.

Sometime in the next few weeks, we will have a larger event to celebrate the park's opening. At this event we are planning to have representatives from the Department of Health on hand to help people obtain dog licenses and dog park tags. You can also get this information at http://app.doh.dc.gov/form/animal_license.asp.

The park will be open until 10:00 pm on Friday. Starting on Saturday, March 26th, the park will be open from 7:00 am to 10:00 pm every day of the year.