Patricia Simonet Laughing Dog Park is slated for closure. Eastern Spokane County residents are pushing back

Otis Orchards resident John Sahr wanted to put a memorial bench dedicated to his friend, Kerry Brown, in the county’s first off-leash dog park.

It’s where they became friends and eventually roommates. Brown was homeless when they first met at Patricia Simonet Laughing Dog Park, and Sahr later offered him and his dog a room, where Brown lived for two years before his death in December.

“He was just a fixture at the park,” Sahr said. “He was a pleasant person for people to visit with.”

Spokane County Parks, Recreation and Golf’s response to Sahr’s request took him by surprise. Sahr was informed the county intended to close the park next month.

Sahr started sounding the alarm of the park’s imminent closure Monday, with assistance from another friend made through frequent park visits, Marty Weiser, a SCRAPS volunteer who helps maintain the space. Weiser took to social media and posted contact information for county leaders around the fenced, 3½ -acre park tucked inside the larger Gateway Regional Park.

“It’s well loved,” Weiser said. “Two -thirds of the people out there are out there three, four, even five times a week.”

The call to action was answered. Spokane County leadership heard from community members across the region this week calling on the county to reverse course. While no definitive action is in the works, county spokeswoman Martha Lou Wheatley-Billeter said the outpouring of community support has the county evaluating alternative plans.

The park was established in 2006 and later named in Patricia Simonet’s honor shortly after she died at age 51 after a three-year battle with cancer.

Simonet was an animal behaviorist, and development and program coordinator at SCRAPS, who identified unique vocalizations made by dogs when they are in a playful mood. The sound is still used by animal shelters to help calm dogs in care. Simonet enjoyed a whirlwind of media coverage following the discovery first made at the shelter in Spokane County.

“We played it (the play panting) to dogs individually in a room and watched each one,” Simonet told The Spokesman-Review in 2005. “They’d play, pick up a toy or go to the computer and bump at it.”

Wheatley-Billeter said the decision to close the park was made due to budgetary constraints. As part of the 2026 budgeting process, Spokane County Commissioners closed a projected $20 million shortfall, as previously reported by The Spokesman-Review. 2027 is forecast to be another tight budgeting cycle.

The park is expected to close April 21, when the county’s long -running $32,000-per-year lease with the Washington State Department of Transportation comes to an end. County leadership opted not to renew the lease amid the budget struggles, and have contacted WSDOT to potentially find a solution.

A decision to keep the park open, by whatever means, would likely come before the Spokane County Commissioners for approval.

On top of the lease costs, the county also has a few staff members who help maintain the park. Weiser said parks employees will mow the grass every once in a while when it gets too long. The restrooms on -site are maintained jointly by the county and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Wheatley-Billeter said.

If county residents would like to see the park live on, Weiser advised they continue to voice so to their county commissioners. It’s a community asset for a corner of the county with few options for similar off-leash play, Weiser said. The two nearest dog parks are Valley Mission Dog Park 11 miles away in Spokane Valley, and Atlas Waterfront Park outside Coeur d’Alene.

Both lack the benefits provided by Patricia Simonet Laughing Dog Park, Weiser said.

“It’s a nice size, the dogs can run, there is kind of a walking path around toward the outside edge that I would say is about a quarter mile,” Weiser said. “It’s a good meeting place for people from this whole side of the county.”

The community fostered in the park is a large part of its allure, according to both Weiser and Sahr. There is a large group of regulars who cross paths, mingle and share their stressors, accomplishments and health struggles.

“We see kind of the same people most every day, and over the years, learn more about each other,” Sahr said.

For Sahr, who relocated from Seattle four years ago to care for his parents, the park is a highlight of the many wonderful natural areas county residents have available to them. There’s a clump of black locust trees found hardly anywhere else, wild irises and a few large Oregon grape bushes nearby where he’s “harvested enough in summers to make a quart or so of syrup.

Sahr said he can’t imagine another use for the land.

“It’s a pretty place,” Sahr said. “I mean, you’ve got to kind of like the sunny desert, but if you do, like me, then it’s great.”