Girl Scouts help city canine owners find dog park

GIRL SCOUTS paint paw prints to lead to the dog park section of Community Park. Donna Beth Weilenman/ Staff

GIRL SCOUTS from Troop 20290 paint paw prints to lead to the dog park section of Community Park.
Donna Beth Weilenman/Staff

People who like to walk their dogs to Community Park may have noticed a sign that directs them to follow painted paw prints to the site’s dog park.

They also may have noticed those paw prints have been gone for a long time.

But that’s changing, courtesy of Benicia’s Girl Scout Troop 20290 and one member who, like other pet owners, noticed the pathways were bare.

Sarah Jennings, who like others in the troop is 10 and about to enter fifth grade, was in the park off Rose Drive about a month ago, walking her poodle-Maltese terrier mix, Kaya.

She read the sign and looked for the guiding marks. “There’s no paw prints left,” she said.

Sarah decided to call Rick Knight, Benicia superintendent of parks and building maintenance and talked to him about replacing the vanished path marks.

“I asked if I could do it,” she said. “He provided us with the paint and the stencils.”

“It’s a long way,” Knight said about the distance the girls will cover with the white prints.

The pathway ranges from the entrance and the city’s solar panels to the skate park, then on to the dog park along a curving, winding paved path.

GIRL SCOUTS (from left) Katie Edwards, Kailey Magel, Sarah Jennings and Meadow Iniguez hold stencils used to paint paw prints on the walkway at Community Park.
Donna Beth Weilenman/Staff

Sarah and the rest of the troop of Girl Scouts began painting giant paw prints Tuesday, and have made it a project in hopes of winning a Bronze Award.

“That’s the highest they can win at this level,” Troop Leader Rachele Iniguez said.

Other awards, Silver and Gold, are for older girls, she said.

The Bronze Award is a leadership adventure for Girl Scout Juniors. The Scouts select a project, form a team and make a plan. The girls chart their progress and submit the results to the Girl Scout Council, which in turn determines if the girls will be given the award.

Each of the seven girls in the troop has to put in 20 hours on the project, and given the length of the pathway and the number of prints the girls have to do, they’ll have plenty of opportunity to fulfill that obligation.

In three days, the girls had painted nearly 160 big prints. But there were many yards of pathway yet to cover. How soon will they be done?

“I don’t know,” Iniguez said.

However, she said it’s a significant step toward earning the Bronze Award that the girls expect have the work completed before the start of school.

It’s not the only public service activity the girls have done, Sarah said — “But we’ve never done anything like this before.”