Our Mission
Friends of San Luis Obispo City Dog Parks (Friends) is working with the City of San Luis Obispo, and other interested parties, to create and maintain safe, clean, off-leash fenced dog parks within the City of San Luis Obispo. Such facilities will promote social and recreational opportunities for the citizens of San Luis Obispo and their canine companions. Our efforts are paying off as the City, in 2025, has built its first fenced dog park at Laguna Lake Park! Two other enclosed dog parks at Emerson Park, and the new Righetti Park have also been conceptually approved! Friends will continue working with the City towards completion of these additional dog parks.
Fundraising by Friends will continue to help the City secure additional, unfunded dog park elements, as the recreation budget continues to fall short in meeting the recreational demands of the City. Our current campaign of constructing and donating agility/obstacle equipment for the Laguna Lake Dog Park is nearing completion. We worked with Pacific Beach High School to build most of this equipment. To date, the dog park includes dog walks, pole weaves, A-frames, seesaws, hurdles, tire jumps and 3-level platforms for the small and big dog areas.
The City has recently approved Friends constructing needed windbreaks at the Laguna Lake DP. These walls will also second as a place for granite memorial plaques to remember your favorite furry friends that have crossed over the rainbow bridge. Pacific Beach HS will again be assisting us in their construction. If interested in purchasing one of these wonderful plaques to be placed on the wind wall, please visit our webstore (Friends of SLO City Dog Parks) or contact John McKenzie for more information.
Another component of our mission will be education. We strongly believe that an important element towards the success of any dog park is to ‘know when to go’ and protocols to follow at the park. There are circumstances when you might not want to take your furry friend to the dog park. Click here for information on this subject.
Lastly, we will be working with the City’s volunteer coordinator on how best we can help the City get volunteers to help on the dog park maintenance.
Upcoming Events
Currently, no events are planned.
Get Involved
There are several ways to get involved in this worthy cause, as follows:
1. Become a Member of our Meta/Facebook working group (Friends of SLO City Dog Parks) at Friends of SLO City Dog Parks | Facebook. Here we keep our members updated on the latest news as well as ‘calls to action’ if we think letters to or attendance at certain public meetings will help get our point across.
2. Volunteer – see above, we need volunteers at the Laguna Lake Dog Park.
3. Donate – Any monies donated will go towards those important amenities that were not included in the original construction work at Laguna Lake and the future Emerson and Righetti. Click on https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=RYP673WH4XZHU
for donations or visit our webstore for products at Friends of SLO City Dog Parks.
About Us
We are a seven-member Board (two vacancies currently - contact us if interested in joining us as we make decisions about our City dog parks), as follows:
John McKenzie, President
Brian Reynolds, Vice-President
Kelly Heffernon, Treasurer
Jennifer Dobbe, Member-at-Large
Drew Neilsen, Member-at-Large
Contact Us
For questions or comments, please contact John at johnnimac123@gmail.com
Or write us at:
Friends of SLO City Dog Parks , PO Box 15604, San Luis Obispo, CA 93406
Visit Us on Facebook