Despite the wet weather, numerous dogs and their owners attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony Saturday morning for the new Bark in the Park dog run located at Gunn Park near Shelter House #7.

The idea for the dog park began when community members Jim and Martha Scott saw such a park a few years ago when traveling through another city. Since that time, the city of Fort Scott, the Fort Scott Area Chamber of Commerce and several other individual businesses and persons assisted in making the park a reality.

“It was all donations,” Jim Scott announced. “No tax dollars.”

Some of the donations included dog toys, park benches, waste bags, a sign as well as money for the fencing materials and time volunteered to dig the postholes from businesses such as Sleep Inn and Suites and Walmart as well as a collection of individuals.

“When you have a community like Bourbon County and like Fort Scott, you can do these things to raise the money, because you don’t need tax dollars,” Scott said. “Because the people raise it and say ‘I want to help, that sounds like a great idea.’”

Lindsay Madison, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce, expressed their excitement for the new dog park and encouraged others to approach the chamber with similar ideas for the city of Fort Scott.

“This is just one additional, great asset to our community,” Madison said. “The more things we have here, the more people will come.”