South Loop Dog Park Cooperative: Striving for a dog friendly community in Chicago's South Loop

We know the South Loop has a ton of dogs in the neighborhood and occasionally they cause quite a stir on Sloopin. With that said, we were recently contacted by the South Loop Dog Park Cooperative about raising awareness about their organization and their projects. Their vision and mission is:

Vision: The South Loop Dog PAC envisions a clean, safe, and healthy neighborhood for all dogs and humans who live and play in the South Loop.

Mission: The South Loop Dog PAC advocates for and supports responsible dog-ownership in Chicago’s South Loop. We provide and maintain safe off-leash areas for dogs and humans to socialize in area parks, and we work to encourage healthy and mutually beneficial dog-human relationships in the community.

It's not a small undertaking and members are necessary to live up to these goals. With that said, they have a membership drive that currently is going on (they're trying to get 210 new members in 2010):

The SLDogPAC has started a membership drive this year, with the goal of increasing the membership support sufficiently to sustain operations in the future (operations: replace the pea gravel in the parks, clean up the parks, supply dog waste bags at the new dispensers we've installed, as well as trying to implement improvements to the two off-leash areas). Without community support (membership, donations) it's going to be hard to get anything done (see membership benefits here). So, we need community awareness of the SLDogPAC, and we need people who are willing to become members.

They're also interested in our thoughts about their organization:

It would be interesting to get a sense of the community's feelings about the SLDogPAC - often when I've been to either of the DFAs with my dogs there have been far more people and dogs using the park than are members in the SLDogPAC, and when asked, people have indicated that they were unaware of the existence of the SLDogPAC. But I wonder if that's true (there are signs up everywhere, now). Naively (again, I've only been on the board since last March) one would think that the dog community would want to support the group that's trying to maintain a facility they use regularly (membership is only $30/year!), but I wonder if there's some other resistance to the SLDogPAC's mission. And if there is, we need to hear about it!

So what are your thoughts? Inquiring minds want to know...

Finally, this is a post about dogs after all so we feel obligated to show a YouTube video of a cute puppy: