'Burg makes dog park finalist

The dog days of summer just got a little better in Lynchburg.

On Wednesday, a national contest looking to help one community start up a dog park picked Lynchburg as one of its 15 finalists.

The city beat out hundreds of other places from across the country to make it to the final phase of the “Bark for Your Park” challenge sponsored by PetSafe, a pet supplies company.

The grand prize is $100,000 for the development of a dog park. Lynchburg was the only Virginia locality selected as a finalist.

“We’re very ecstatic,” said Niro Rasanayagam, treasurer/secretary of Friends of the Lynchburg Dog Park, a citizen’s group created to help bring a dog park to the city. “I’ve just been on the phone and on email trying to reach out to all our contacts so people can start voting immediately.”

The top dog in the “Bark for Your Park” contest will be selected through a public online vote conducted between now and Aug. 3. People are allowed to vote up to twice a day — once on the contest’s website and once on PetSafe’s Facebook page.

The highest vote getter will claim the grand prize.

“Remember to vote every day,” PetSafe urges on its website. “We want to hear everyone BARK for your Park!”

Lynchburg’s dog lovers will be working hard to get out the vote in the coming weeks, according to Rasanayagam. In addition to being encouraged to vote themselves, residents will also be asked to reach out to friends and family around the world in order to maximize participation.

Supporters are also hopeful that animal organizations in other parts of Virginia will be willing to go online and vote for the city.

“We’re really going to be trying to harness support from everywhere we can,” Rasanayagam said, noting they don’t want Lynchburg to end getting elbowed out by one of the bigger cities in the running.

“We have to be very organized and very dedicated about this,” she said. “But we’re pretty optimistic. I think we can get it done. We just need to come together as a community.”

The community has shown its willingness to rally around the dog park project before. In June, more than 200 people and at least half as many canines came together to help shoot a video for the “Bark for Your Park” contest. 

The video, titled “Every Dog’s Dream,” is now available on the contest’s website along with the entries submitted by the other 14 finalists.

If Lynchburg triumphs in the contest, it will pave the way for the city to open up its first dog park.

The city government had already agreed to create a park if citizens could raise all the money needed for supplies and equipment. A site for the dog park has been reserved at the Blackwater Creek Athletic Area off Monticello Avenue.