For as dog friendly as America is, if you have ever tried to travel with a canine companion or two, you know how hard it can be to find a place to let your best friend play. On a recent road trip through Indiana, I was super excited to see a dog park right off the side of the highway just north of Indianapolis, but upon trying to enter the facility, we were blocked from entry because we didn’t have our dogs’ health records with us. If I had the free Dog Park Finder iPhone app, I could have looked up the details ahead of time and came prepared with the pertinent papers.

Or, like that time we decided to find the dog-friendly area at the Fermilab campus in the western suburbs of Chicago and we walked for miles, only to find that it was an unfenced area. And, there was no way we were letting our beloved Shetland Sheepdog puppy run free in the middle of the gigantic park area. If we had this app, we could have found out ahead of time that is was unfenced.

So long story short, if you have a dog and an iPhone, there really is no reason not to download this free dog park-finding app. Simple use your phone’s GPS to find the closest locations to you, or search the more than 2,000 strong database by city and state or zip when traveling.

The app is powered by dogparkusa.com, and includes three years worth of compiled user reviews and photos in addition to the basic information on each park. It’s like Yelp! for dog lovers. I would love to see this app expand to include pet-friendly places nearby each park, such as restaurants, pet groomers, vets and even lodging for road trips.