Bark in the Park 2009

Furburbia, the no-kill shelter where we got Jasper and Cosette, was having a fund raiser today. It started with a 5k fun run and went on through the day with events like agility competitions, frisbee catching, and dog races. Last year Jasper took 3rd in the frisbee catching.

This year Jasper and I entered the 5k run and Julie worked as a course volunteer. They had the run set up through a quiet little neighborhood. Not only did they have water for the human runners, they had kiddie pools full of water for the running dogs. Jasper stopped to enjoy several of them.

Jasper is wide open and ready to run before the race. He is styling his new Furburbia bandana.



There were probably 100 dogs in the race and they tried to wait until the last minute to gather everyone at the starting line. As you can guess, it was quite exciting. With that in mind, they let the people running without dogs leave about 2 minutes ahead of us.



Dogs ranged from a miniature dachshund to a great dane. Of course the default in Park City is a lab or lab mix. 5k is a good distance for the little munchkin dogs.



The bad news for Jasper is that I am not fast enough to compete with some of the human runners, and he wasn't allowed to run off leash and finish sooner on his own. I think we finished about 7th of the people with dogs. Maybe next year?

It was great fun and Jasper got to meet lots of other dogs, most of which were wonderfully well behaved. We were hungry at the end of the race and decided that a nice breakfast was better than hanging around for all the other competitions.