Foam, fetch and fancy cocktails: Pittsburgh pups party at Dog Penn’s Labor Day bash

The Dog Penn, a private dog park and bar in Pittsburgh’s Strip District, offered its patrons Monday all the accoutrements of a fantastic Labor Day celebration.

A bartender was ready to sling cocktails like Frenchie, a mix of butterfly pea gin, lemon and prosecco, and fill pint glasses with a Pineapple Gulpin beer from nearby craft brewery Cinderlands.

Not far from tables crowded with oversized blue bowls of potato chips and caramel popcorn sat a chili dog bar stocked with diced onions, multiple shredded cheeses and all the trimmings.

Two oversized pinball machines — one themed for John Wick; the other, Guardians of the Galaxy — were plugged in Monday and raring to go. On a big-screen TV nearby, NFL football reigned as the Philadelphia Eagle battled the Kansas City Chiefs in a rematch of February’s Super Bowl LIX.

But, as lunch unfurled toward dinner, the place was largely empty.

Instead, pet owners flocked to and filled a scenic beer garden outside to watch a cadre of happy dogs romp in spray foam during The Dog Penn’s first-ever Labor Day Foam Party.

Kristen Bixby smiled as June — her and her husband Chris’ 1-year-old Alaskan Klee Kai with stunning ice-blue eyes — gallivanted about.

“Her breed can be really stand-offish. And we talked to a trainer, who said, ‘Socialize, socialize, socialize,’” said Bixby, 45, a nurse who lives on Pittsburgh’s North Side. “So, we brought her here. And she just loves it.”

“The dogs, they really teach each other manners,” added Chris Bell, 44, Bixby’s husband. “They teach each other how to play and how to interact.”

On Monday afternoon, that instruction was jovial, to say the least. Some puppies tunneled through mountains of the white foam while their owners enjoyed drinks or shade nearby. Other dogs repeatedly lept skyward to see if they could catch the streams of bubbly stuff sprayed from a hose attached to a nearby barrel.

Not everyone was local.

Ryan and and Tessa Maki loaded their 1-year-old Pug, Rufus, into a car Monday to drive an hour from their native Girard, Ohio, near Youngstown, for the event.

They were not disappointed.

“He slept the whole drive down here,” laughed Ryan Maki, 29, who was sporting a black T-shirt with a picture of a pup and the words “Rufus’s Dad” on it.

“We’re pretty sure he’s going to sleep the whole way back, too,” added Tessa Maki, 32, with a laugh.

Brad Slover, who started working at The Dog Penn a few months ago, often stood — or sat — in the middle of the action. The Pittsburgh area man doesn’t own a dog but you wouldn’t have known it from how he palled around with puppies in the foam.

“I kinda lifeguard here, referee, a little all of the above,” laughed Slover, 38.

“Golden retrievers, any time there’s water involved, they’re in it,” Slover added. “But, each dog, they have their own personality. It doesn’t matter the type of dog.”

Alissa May has seen all sorts of four-legged fans enter The Dog Penn since she and husband Travis opened it on Oct. 20, 2024. She says some of what charms dogs about the place might be subconscious.

Pittsburgher Joseph Labriola and his family, who started making Italian sausages in 1927, plied their trade for years out of the pseudo-industrial space on Penn Avenue where The Dog Penn now sits.

“We re-did the whole building — but it’s got incredible bones,” said May, 41 of Pittsburgh’s South Side neighborhood. “We thought it was great, you know, maybe the dogs would smell something and they’d feel welcome.”