Athens Memorial Dog Park

SUCH a GREAT place for dogs! We took our two this morning. The dogs had a blast and they met lots of friends. Also, met several amazing people friends. This place attracts awesome friendly peeps and dogs. Loved hanging out and making new friends. Highly recommend!

Such a beautiful place!! Very natural setting. Benches and bathrooms are available but the water fountain inside the dog park was broken… And remember this is a very natural setting dog park so if you have difficulty walking or are in a wheelchair you may want to go on the paved paths provided instead, because once inside the fences there are exposed roots etc that you could trip on. Overall I love this place and have be many times. The people are friendly and there is a lot to see. I also love the amazing turtle pond!!!

Beautiful day Memorial Park couldn’t see the beavers but plenty of geese to feed and this cute mother duck with her babies

We love the little zoo and the playground. We don’t have a dog, so I don’t know about the dog park, but the walk around the small pond is beautiful from one end and gross from the other. It looks like the stream that feeds the pond is dried up or needs to be dug out a bit because the pond does not have enough water on the one end. But there are so many turtles! If your kids like turtle’s, you should come feed them. We didn’t see any ducks on this short visit, but the turtles made up for it!.

After going to this park for almost a year now, I’ve got very mixed feelings about the way it’s upkept and the decisions made by the heads of staff regarding repair priority.
Ever since the park re-opened, many people have been using the upper exit/entrance and parking along the sides of the paved pad going from the cul-de-sac to the maintenance entrance.
Especially older people who don’t want to walk half a mile uphill from the main entrance. Anyway, the management made the decision to put barriers and locks and spent thousands of dollars on landscaping and a fence to keep people from pulling up onto the pad. That in and of itself isn’t that big of a deal, its their property, and they withhold the right to section off the entrance to foot traffic only. What makes people mad (and I’ve spoken to just about everyone I can in this park about this situation) is that there are many repairs that need to be done in the park itself and more quality of life changes that could be made to make it a better experience for all visitors.
To list a few: All 4 gates need to be properly installed. A frequent local recently did a temporary fix and now they slam shut like they should, but they still need more work to make sure they fully function (like the Wiggley Field dog park)
The water spicket hasn’t worked well ever since it got turned off over the winter. To fill up a bowl, it takes around 4 or 5 minutes, so most everyone has resorted to walking down to the bathrooms and just using the sinks.
The landscaping crews seem fairly lazy as well, there’s always tennis balls scattered around the field and instead of collecting them or kicking them out of the way, they just run them over, splitting them and creating a hazard for dogs that like to chew on and eat the rubber inside. I also have not seen them fill many, if any, holes which a dog can easily fall into while running and possibly break a leg.
I could go on and on about all the little things management neglects, but this essay is getting too long as it is.
The only reason this gets 2 stars instead of 1 is that the crowd of regulars is very friendly, and I’ve only had 1 or 2 bad experiences with out of control dogs.
Sadly, the managers just seems to have some sort of disdain and contempt for the people using their service, to the point they go out of their way and spend thousands on unnecessary road blocks which only creates more traffic on the small road leading to the secondary entrance on Woodland Hills Dr.
I hope somebody who cares sees this and addresses at least some of these issues, but from what I’ve experienced, it seems like the only decisions made so far negatively impact the park goers rather than balancing security and leisur.