Smithville will be getting a dog park after being chosen for a $25,000 grant to get the ball rolling.
Randy and Jenny Boyd, with the Boyd Foundation, announced Wednesday that 30 communities across Tennessee will be awarded grants totaling $900,000 to help make our state the most pet-friendly in the nation.
Dozens of communities worked all year long to organize residents, coordinate with local officials, mobilize on social media, and host pet-friendly events to win a $25,000 grant to build or improve an existing dog park in their community. Two communities - Columbia and Cookeville- who went above and beyond the requirements - will each receive the $100,000 grand prize grant as two of the “Most Dog-Friendly” cities in Tennessee.
“Jenny and I are amazed at the hard work and dedication of the people in our state to make life better for their pets and their neighbors. We are proud to support them in their work,” said Randy Boyd, founder of PetSafe and co-founder of The Boyd Foundation. “We are passionate about bringing people and pets together to create stronger communities, and we’ve found one of the best ways to do that is at a local dog park. We cannot wait to see how these communities use their grants to create local parks for Tennesseans and their pets to enjoy for decades to come.”
Tennessee Dog Park Dash received nearly 50 applications, from a variety of Tennessee towns, with only a few thousand residents to some of our state’s larger cities. The full list of winning communities for the 2019 Tennessee Dog Park Dash grants includes:
EAST TENNESSEE: Baneberry, Clinton, Collegedale, Crossville (Fairfield Glade), Elizabethton, Etowah, Louisville, Madisonville, New Tazewell, Rhea County, Signal Mountain/ Walden
MIDDLE TENNESSEE: Cookeville*, Columbia*, Dickson, Fayetteville, La Vergne, Pulaski, Smithville, Springfield, Wartrace
WEST TENNESSEE: Bartlett, Gleason, Lake County, Memphis, Munford, Newbern, Paris, Selmer, Trenton, Ripley
*Grand Prize Winners
The Tennessee Dog Park Dash is a multi-year initiative aimed at making Tennessee the most pet-friendly state in the country by awarding deserving communities $3 million in total grants over three years to build and enhance dog parks.
In its inaugural year in 2018, 37 communities were awarded a total of $1 million in grants - including grand prize winner, Jackson. The 2020 Tennessee Dog Park Dash application period is expected to begin in early-spring next year when the Boyd Foundation will award another $1 million in grants. Interested communities are encouraged to visit dogparkdash.com to learn more.
The city board of mayor and aldermen will discuss the next step in starting the dog park at their next meeting. Plans are to locate it near the animal shelter. Alderman Gayla Hendrix who spearheaded the grant request says she envisions having two separate fenced areas, one for big dogs and another for small dogs. She would also like to install benches for dog owners to sit while their pets play. The city already owns the land so the full amount will be used to construct the dog park once final plans are laid.
