A HUGE thank you to Hill Hounds member Erica Wilkins for volunteering to be the Kingsman Dog Park Maintenance Coordinator. And also a big thank you to the folks who have stepped up to be Maintenance Volunteers! Unfortunately, only four people have volunteered to help out with maintenance so far. So we're asking for your help.

If you've been using and enjoying Kingsman Dog Park, please consider volunteering. It's a volunteer commitment of only about 2 hours a month but will be a huge help.

Email Erica at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you can help.

If we get five more maintenance volunteers, each person will be responsible for:
--hosing down the surface of the park with sanitary spray or raking it once a month between May and October and every other month between November and April. This takes about 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
-checking on day to day items when you're visiting 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 will be installed soon) are appropriate
-participating in the park clean up days that will happen every 3 months (when you're available)

Background on Why Hill Hounds is Responsible for Park Maintenance:
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.

Again, please email Erica at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you can help out.

Good news! We've heard back from the Department of Parks and Recreation that, weather permitting, the construction company will be back at Kingsman Dog Park next week finishing the surface and fixing other issues.

Apparently the delay was that the supplier from which the construction company purchases asphalt needs a certain amount to be ordered before it goes into production.

The repairs/continued construction will include:

• Finishing the surface of the basketball court
• Fixing the "mud pit" area
• Closing the small gap in the fence in the northeast corner
• Installing the community bulletin board

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.

Hill Hounds Members-

Kingsman Dog Park is almost complete and could open as early as later this week. However, we REALLY need some of you to sign up to volunteer to help run the park.

The park will only be open 7 AM to 10 PM each day and the Department of Parks and Recreation wants it to be locked at night, which means that Hill Hounds members will be responsible for unlocking the gate each morning and locking it each night.

Awesome Hill Hounds members Brittany Kramer and Allie Hagan have volunteered to coordinate the volunteers who will lock and unlock the park but they only have a few volunteers on their team so far. If you would be available to go to the park at 7 AM or 10 PM a few days a week, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE email Brittany and Allie at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Looking forward to seeing you at the park soon!

Construction of Kingsman Field Dog Park is moving along nicely! Check out photos of the construction progress by Hill Hounds Board member Mike Herman in our photo gallery. Trees were planted around the perimeter of the park recently and the ground surface appears to be nearly complete.

If construction continues to move along smoothly, the Department of Parks and Recreation believes the park could open as soon as mid-January! We'll let you know once we have a solid date for the grand opening. Don't forget to get your dogs registered with a DC dog park tag.