His tiny teeth clutching a tennis ball, Oscar darted back to his owner, Kathryn Clarke, and dropped the ball at her feet.

The 6-year-old Boston Terrier looked up at Clarke and waited with perked ears as she affixed the ball back into a ball launcher, lifted it above her head, and threw it again.

Oscar sprinted back across the dog park and retrieved the ball, teasing the bigger dogs as he zoomed past them.

“He just loves to go. He can’t get enough of the big dogs,” said Clarke, who was at Jasper’s Dog Park on Saturday. More than 100 pooches and their owners gathered Saturday afternoon to celebrate the grand opening of Jasper’s Dog Park – Kirkland’s long-awaited first off-leash dog park, located at 11225 N.E. 120th St. in the Totem Lake neighborhood.

“We live in Woodinville, so this is closer than Marymoor (Redmond) or Robinswood (Bellevue),” said Clarke, who was at the park with her friend, Louis Snyder.

They heard about Kirkland’s dog park during the Go Dog! Go Canine Festival last year. Clarke also just happened to do a recent online search about the dog park and saw it was opening in Kirkland on Saturday.

“It’s great. It’s big and I like that it has the small dog area,” said Clarke, noting that although Oscar loves to play in the big dog area, she has a chihuahua too that would do better in the small dog area.

“She won’t listen to me. She would run away and never come back,” said Clarke. “So I think that it’s great because it’s fully fenced. I can’t take her to any of the other ones because they’re not fully fenced or they don’t have an area for a small chihuahua.”

Kirkland resident Sicily Oakenfold, who was at the dog park with her adopted Plott Hound, Whiskey, was excited about the dog park.

“It’s great – I love dogs,” said 9-year-old Oakenfold, who also volunteered and pulled out invasive weeds before the park opening.

Her stepfather, David, said in the past the family had to take Whiskey to Marymoor Park or keep him on a leash, “which is a pain because he’s so big. We love it. We’ve been wanting a dog park next to our house forever. We’ve been really looking forward to it.”

Chuck and Marti Bartlett, owners of Dooley’s Dog House, were at the event with their pooches Dooley and Hazel. They seemed to be the popular couple at the dog park, as a pack of pooches swarmed around them to eat the treats they were handing out.

“Oh no, I have dog prints on my pants,” Chuck joked as a big hound jumped up to get a treat.

Chuck said he got involved with the dog park project about 10 years ago when he was on the Park Board. But he said it was Jean Guth, president of the Kirkland Dog Off-Leash (KDOG), who really got things going.

“She took this on and kept with it and kept with it and kept with it,” said Chuck. “So she’s the one who made this thing happen.”

But Guth says it was really all the community sponsors and volunteers who made the dog park happen.

During the event, hounds howled and barked as Guth thanked the countless volunteers and sponsors who helped out, including Amy Introligator, a KDOG member who organized the annual canine festival, and Tracy Doering, who led the volunteer work parties.

“Our park has very few 90-degree angles and that’s something that Tracy and others came up with,” said Guth. “She created curved edges so dogs couldn’t get trapped in 90-degree angles.”

But it was perhaps Guth’s inspiration behind why she became involved that made the park possible. The park is named after Guth’s Jack Russell Terrier, Jasper, who died in 2010 – two years after Guth got involved with the park project.

She moved to Kirkland several years ago with Jasper and her other dog.

“I moved here from Seattle and they have so many great dog parks and it seemed Kirkland, with all its dog-friendliness, really needed a dog park,” said Guth, noting her dogs went with a dog walker a couple times a week to Marymoor Park.

Guth and other KDOG members attended many Kirkland City Council meetings over the years and the council finally authorized KDOG to build a public dog park on city property near the intersection last November.

KDOG agreed to fund all direct costs associated with both the development and annual operating costs of the facility on city-owned land. No city funds were used for the project.

“It’s so wonderful to see all that joy and all those people,” said Guth of the grand-opening event. “I’m sure it will be a popular park.”

Guth said Phase 2 of the project will include creating a wider entryway into the park and laying down more ground cover in the spring. The park will also require ongoing maintenance.

Before the ribbon cutting on Saturday, Mayor Joan McBride said Jasper’s Dog Park “is a great community asset, built by the community and funded by the community.”

McBride was at the event with several other council members, including Councilman Bob Sternoff, who held his dachshund, Jake, during the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

“Dogs, are we ready? Let’s get a big howl for you guys,” said McBride amidst howling from dogs and their owners as she cut the ribbon to Jasper’s Dog Park.

Deputy Mayor Doreen Marchione threw out the first ball following the ribbon cutting and owners unleashed their dogs.

For more information, visit KDOG at www.kdog.org/.