How Bellevue Dog Woods turned a local dump into a canine oasis

Fifteen years ago, Bellevue Dog Woods was literally a garbage pile.  “These were what we came into,” says Wendy Blazier, a founder of the dog park, as she shows me photographs depicting a mess of bricks and strewn tree branches. It was “Bellevue’s municipal dump,” she says.  “In about 2011 [the borough] finally said, ‘go ahead, start.’ So we started cleaning out,” Blazier says. “We probably cleaned out tons of bricks, and Belgian block we sold. [We had] old swimming pools. We had over 200 parking meters that still had the concrete ball on them. We manually sawed the pole off of them and scrapped it.” Blazier showed the photographs at the modern day Bellevue Dog Woods , a sight that doesn’t bring to mind the word “dump.” Today, it’s a beautiful off-leash dog park complete with paved walkways, agility courses, and, in the summer, a small swimming pool and stone fountain, all made possible through a unique nonprofit model that collaborates with rather than relies on local government. Franklin the Rottweiler cools off at Bellevue Dog Woods on June 8, 2026. Credit: Mars Johnson Located at 300 Bellevue Rd., right next to a dek hockey rink in Bellevue Park, Bellevue Dog Woods offers a large, mostly level area for dogs to socialize and exercise. Like most dog parks, it offers two sectioned-off areas, one for small dogs and one for large dogs, but the large dog area always proves more popular.  Blazier served as president of the dog park in its first nine years, but today, Kevin Reinhart, a retired, lifelong Bellevue resident, serves as president. His background in sales makes him a dogged fundraiser for the nonprofit, but sometimes the posters and events aren’t needed for getting some cash to fund the operation.  “We’ve had mulch deliveries, and guys are here, and they can’t stay to shovel mulch for maybe a bad back, or whatever, and they’ll just hand you a twenty [dollar bill] or two twenties,” Reinhart says.