Work begins on new Texarkana dog park | Community Spirit

The physical work of building a dog part at Jefferson Park has begun. Work crews and backhoes descended on the park Tuesday morning and started the digging and tree removal needed to give dogs across Texarkana a place to call their own.

Over the summer, PetSmart held a nationwide "Bark for your Park" contest, where people would vote for their community and explain why their city or town needed a dog park. At the first of August, Texarkana found out it won the contest with more than 160,000 votes.

PetSmart awarded Texarkana $100,000, which will go not only to building the dog park, but also to help the Texarkana Animal Shelter. Now that ground has been broke at the site, Texarkana hopes to have the dog park's grand opening in the spring of 2013.