by Shira Kantor, May 11, 2005

Fetch and friendship: A Burnsville dog park is about the people, too

Zigzagging past one another, Robbie and Hunter blithely homed in on their goal: the retrieval and conquering of a worn tennis ball.

It was Hunter who really made a swim for it, paddling about 20 feet into the pond, gnashing at the water, jaws searching for a hold.

Robbie, his newest friend, splashed at water's edge but gave up pursuit of the ball in favor of nosing at the ground. Then he ran full force into his owners' legs.

The dogs ran, swam and sniffed last week at Alimagnet Dog Park in Burnsville, an off-leash area built and maintained almost entirely by volunteers. It is most prominently a people park -- a place where dog lovers have become a tight-knit community.

Known among visitors as a top dog park for its trails, pond, sheltered picnic area and seven acres of space, the park recently won $10,000 in a contest that ranked it among the five best off-leash areas in the country.

"He loves it here," said Saundra Urbacke, one of Robbie's owners. Urbacke and her boyfriend, Tom Fletcher, both Savage residents, said they try to get their 1-year-old Doberman to the park as often as possible.

Urbacke and Fletcher had met Hunter's owner -- Tanner Dery of Lakeville -- just a few minutes earlier. Like most visitors to the park, they will probably remember each other by their dogs' names.

A new fence

The volunteer group that helped build the park, People of Alimagnet Caring for K-9s (PACK), wants to spend the contest money to replace the fence that members built when the park opened almost four years ago.

The fence is a bit rickety, said Garrett Beck, a Burnsville recreation department employee and founding PACK member. The group also will do some landscaping and build a smaller side park for small and old dogs and those with special needs.

"The single biggest factor of why the dog park won an award is the PACK group itself," Beck said. "They truly have a passion for this type of recreation."

A grassroots effort by those same people got the park built in the first place. Burnsville set aside the land within Alimagnet Park and provided $5,000 to get the park going. A swarm of volunteers put enough work into it to finish the park at a cost of roughly $2,000 and then stayed together to run it. PACK now has 300 to 400 volunteer members.

Brigitt Martin, a Burnsville resident, writes a quarterly newsletter for PACK members. "I'm Canadian, and I made most of my friends in Minnesota in that park," she said.

Beck agreed. His two huskies died earlier this year, and he was blown away by "the care and the letters and cards that came in from people.

"We call it a dog park," Beck said. "But if I had to do it again, I would have probably given it another name, because it really is for the people that use it."

Not everyone is perfectly happy with the park. Julie McNulty said she used to go to the Alimagnet Dog Park, but was turned off when she noticed that pond seemed to be unclean.

"We don't like the Alimagnet Dog Park because all the dogs poop there," she said. "I'm not comfortable with the idea of my dog going into the water. I like the park and the people; it's really just a sanitation issue."

Beck said the pond is like any stagnant body of water and could be susceptible to bacteria. He said the water seeps into and is filtered by the ground and that park users who do not want their dogs swimming in the water should command them to stay away from it.

All park users are encouraged to pick up after their dogs, he said.