Cookeville Pursuing Funding For New Dog Park

The city of Cookeville is pursuing funding to construct a new dog park at Cane Creek Park.

Economic Development Coordinator Melinda Keifer said the city has entered for a chance to win $25,000 in grant funds through the Dog Park Dash.

“Dog parks are just a great opportunity to get out to let your dog actually get out, run, and be in the grass,” Keifer said. “We have tons of pet owners here. We’ve had a lot of interest previously with people asking ‘are we ever going to have a dog park?’ So it’s just another amenity for our citizens to have a place to take their pets.”

The Boyd Foundation sponsors the Dog Park Dash, providing grant funding to Tennessee communities in order to construct the parks.

The foundation awards winning cities $25,000 in funding for the construction of dog parks in their communities.

“We just thought this was a good opportunity to try to be able to come up with funds to actually execute that part of the master plan,” Keifer said. “If you decide to let the foundation and Dog Park Dash know how much your community wants it, [we] could be the grand-prize winner, and that grant would be for $100,000.

Cookeville applied for the Dog Park Dash in 2018 but was not selected to receive funding. McMinnville and Crossville each received $25,000 through the program last year, while Jackson received the $100,000 grand prize.

Citizens can use the hashtag #dogparkdash on social media and submit letters of support to help Cookeville’s efforts. Keifer said grant recipients should be announced by the end of the month.