Libertyville's Dog Days Of Summer Event Will Take Place As Scheduled

LIBERTYVILLE, IL — As local communities consider keeping local events and festivals on the schedule in the wake of this week’s mass shooting in Highland Park, organizers of this weekend’s Dog Days of Summer in Libertyville will go ahead with their plans.

The Dogs Days Of Summer event runs from Friday to Sunday in Cook Park in downtown Libertyville and features a dog competition, pet parade, blessing of the pets, and other activities. Organizers elected to keep the event’s schedule intact despite other communities – including Highland Park – deciding to cancel their events after the deadly attack at the July 4 parade.

Dan Love, a village trustee and chairman of the event, told the Chicago Tribune that while “it’s a different Fourth of July for a lot of people,” organizers plan to go ahead with the three-day event as scheduled.

Love confirmed to Patch on Wednesday that the event will go on as planned and that he he asked for more of a police presence for the festival. He did not immediately return an email seeking comment on what the normal number of police officers assigned to work the annual event would be in other years.

In Highland Park, several events ­— including five days’ worth of musical performances at the Ravinia Festival — have been canceled following the mass shooting which claimed seven lives and injured two dozen more people.

Love told the Tribune that life should be about family events such as the ones that local residents will share with their dogs this weekend in Libertyville.

“It’s not about the sick people that start shooting people,” Love told the Tribune.