Tea based business brings first dog water park to state

Dogs now have a new place to play in the area.

Smoken Dakota Kennels of Tea opened its Splash Bark by SDK at The Resort by SDK with a ribbon cutting at the Harrisburg location Jan. 30. Owner Teri Jo Olean noted that she and her husband opened Smoken Dakota Kennels by Tea in 2007.

At the west location, they offer boarding, daycare and training. They offer group classes, stay and trains and custom classes.

They bought Top Dog in May 2017 at 27246 SD HWY 115 and renamed it The Resort by SDK.

In that time, they added on more boarding and daycare, along with a huge indoor playroom. They have also added a spa room, massage room and now The Splash Bark by SDK. The facility is now 15,000 square feet geared to dogs.

The addition of a splash park for dogs came to Olean when she was visiting a people water park with her son. Nothing like it exists in the region.

“I was sitting on a bench watching him and I’m going how cool would this be to have tons of dogs running around and splashing around. I could just picture it,” she said.

Construction began in July on the addition to the resort. Olean credits their contractors and neighbor, BHI, with keeping the project on track and being ready to open in six months.

“BHI did a fantastic job, kept right on target. They were very, very easy to work with, very accommodating,” Olean said. “We started groundwork in July and we’re opening in January. That’s pretty incredible for something of this size. We literally doubled our space that we originally had.”

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