Dogs dressed as pumpkins, superheroes, and everything in between will parade through Lakewood's Birdtown neighborhood on October 10, when the 19th annual Spooky Pooch Parade returns to Madison Park. The free festival runs from 12:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Madison Park, located at 13201 Madison Avenue, with the costume parade itself kicking off at 2 p.m. and winding along Athens, Clarence, Madison, and Halsted avenues.
According to Cleveland.com, the event includes a festival, a costume parade through Birdtown, and an awards presentation, with entertainment, pumpkin painting, food trucks, and vendors filling out the afternoon. Dogs of all sizes can compete across several costume categories, including Best Pooch & Child, Best Pooch & Adult, Best Pooch & Group, Spookiest Pooch, and Best in Show, with winners expected to be announced around 3:15 p.m.
Owners hoping to march their dogs down Madison Avenue need to register in advance, and the article notes that advance registration costs $15 per dog plus transaction fees, while day-of registration runs $20 per dog. Multiple-dog discounts are only available through advance sign-up, per the same account. The event will go on rain or shine, and while the parade itself requires registration, general festival attendance is free.
A Nonprofit Tradition Rooted in Birdtown
Proceeds from the parade benefit LakewoodAlive, described in the report as a nonprofit community development organization. Founded in 2002 by the Lakewood Chamber of Commerce and the City of Lakewood, LakewoodAlive is a 501(c)(3) focused on downtown revitalization and housing outreach, and it operates housing programs and commercial corridor initiatives alongside civic events like this one. Beyond the Spooky Pooch Parade, the organization also produces the Lakewood Summer Meltdown, Light Up Lakewood, and the Front Porch Concert Series, according to the City of Lakewood.
The Birdtown neighborhood hosting this year's parade has its own layered history. It was developed in 1891 by the National Carbon Company on 155 acres to house factory workers, and it takes its name from streets named after local birds like Robin, Lark, and Thrush, according to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, which lists Birdtown on the National Register of Historic Places as a Cleveland streetcar suburb district. The neighborhood continues to see adaptive reuse of its historic buildings; in July, local reporting from Cleveland Magazine highlighted the opening of Birdtown Brewing inside the renovated 101-year-old St. Gregory Theologian Byzantine Catholic Church, part of a broader trend in a suburb where roughly 80 percent of buildings are 90 years or older.
All Breeds Welcome Under Lakewood's Dog Laws
Any breed can join the costume fun today, a shift that traces back to 2018, when Lakewood City Council voted 7-0 to repeal the suburb's decade-long pit bull ban. The council replaced it with a behavior-focused dangerous dog ordinance that treats all dogs equally regardless of breed, following a public advocacy campaign and amicus curiae legal filings, per the Best Friends Animal Society. That policy change means the Spooky Pooch Parade's costume categories, from Best Pooch & Group to Spookiest Pooch, remain open to dogs of every breed marching through Birdtown.
Parade organizers have not always gotten costume oversight right. Following the 2018 Spooky Pooch Parade, LakewoodAlive issued a public apology after a participant was permitted to walk in blackface makeup, an incident that prompted community criticism and led organizers to pledge stricter costume enforcement, according to Cleveland Scene. LakewoodAlive acknowledged at the time that the costume violated community standards for the event.
Best in Show Prize and the National Costume Boom
This year's Best in Show winner will take home a year's supply of dog food from Pet's General Store, an independent pet supply shop that has operated on Madison Avenue in Lakewood for more than 30 years, according to Dogs in the CLE. The store sits just blocks from the parade route, making it a natural fit as the event's top sponsor.
Lakewood's parade fits into a much larger national trend of pet owners going all-in on Halloween. Total U.S. Halloween spending reached a record $13.1 billion in 2025, with spending on pet costumes alone estimated at $860 million and roughly 23 percent of Halloween celebrants planning to dress up their pets, according to National Retail Federation survey data cited by Plus500. The most popular pet costumes nationally tend to include pumpkins, hot dogs, bumblebees, ghosts, and superheroes, trends that often show up among the entrants vying for ribbons at Madison Park.
Dog owners in Lakewood have plenty of other ways to socialize their pets beyond the annual parade. The suburb is home to the Lakewood Dog Park, located nearby in the Rocky River Reservation with separate spaces for small and large dogs, and it also features numerous dog-friendly patio venues around town.
