A short YouTube talk by Donna Bordeaux (CampgroundAccounting.com) offering practical, low-cost tips for campground dog parks. Key recommendations: provide shade (tarps/umbrellas/trees), add seating/benches so owners stay and socialize, avoid spending on obstacle-course equipment (rarely used by dogs), provide trees or fire-hydrant-type markers for male dogs to scent-mark, and maintain grass/avoid muddy, overgrown areas to improve guest experience.
Hi, I'm Donna Bordeaux with campgroundaccounting.com I want to talk to you today about dog parks. This is one of my dogs, Dixie. She's a little camera shy, so forgive her, but Dixie loves to go camping and most dogs love to come see your park. So let's give you little tips on some dog parks and what they're fans of and what their parents are fans of as well. So here we go. I'm going to put her down for a minute and let's get back to it. First off, when you have a dog park and thinking about where to put it in your park, make sure you have shade. There's nothing worse and nothing more useless than a dog park that has no shade. Now, I'm not saying you have to have a full background of mature trees that are planted around it, but make shade. You can use tarps, you can use some umbrellas. Make some shade so that there's a place for the owners as well as their dogs to get out of the heat when it's summertime and it's toasty. With that shade will come the people. Now, the people need a place to set. If there is no place to sit, many people are going to either pass by your dog park or walk in and let their dog do their business and turn around and walk out. Your dog play park should play a big role in helping your guests meet other people with dogs. People with dogs love to talk to other people with dogs, and those people like to see other dogs. So make this a place where your guest experience will shine rather than just be a functional area for a dog to take care of its business. So add some benches, some seats. Let the guests feel comfortable there while their dogs mingle in and play in your dog park. Next up, the obstacle course items. I'll tell you what, I've been to a lot of dog parks in my days and a lot of different campgrounds, and the only people I ever see playing on the obstacle courses and the little ramps and tunnels are little kids. I don't ever see the dogs using that stuff. So keep your money safe on that. Invest in some benches and shade instead. We don't really need the obstacle course now. What you might want to do, though, is if you don't have trees, give the boy dogs something to do. They need a place to hike up their leg here. So either have trees. If you don't have trees, get some little fire hydrants, some fun things to let the dogs take care of their business and have fun on the boys love to have that kind of a thing available for them. I have one boy dog and one girl dog and they will chase each other around but the boy is always looking for the trees. So take care of your guest experience by having a great dog park. You don't have to invest a lot of money to make this happen, but make sure that you're taking care of that park. Another thing is to make sure that you have not just a mud pit, if it rains, have some grass in there. I know it's difficult, it doesn't have to be a manicured landscaped area, but do try to keep it in good shape. Mow the grass and trim in there. There's nothing worse than walking into a dog park that has 8 inch high grass in it that looks like it was an afterthought. This is all part of the guest experience too. So take care of your dog park. Take care of your guests who have dogs, which is a lot of them, and make them happy as well. So hope you have a great day and these tips help you get your dog park into shape. I'm Donna Bordeaux with Campground Accounting.
