The Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade is on after all this year. The pup-arazzi has been notified. Sponsorships have been secured to fund the celebration. It was ruff for a while, but all is well now.

Parade volunteers and a dog wellness company joined forces to save the event this year. The event organizers cancelled the parade just a few days ago.

“Parade has been canceled for the foreseeable future,” headlined the organization’s website in bold letters. The organizers elaborated in an Instagram post that the event was canceled due to ongoing construction inside the park.

“Despite our best efforts to keep the parade going, with ongoing building work in both our local parks there was just no way to hold the parade this year,” the organizers wrote. “As many of you are aware the Halloween Parade is a fundraising event to raise money for maintenance and improvements in the dog run. If you would like to donate to support the dog run please follow the link in our bio.”

Supporters were urged to post pictures of their dogs in costumes on Instagram.

It is traditionally held in the park. The parade was “canceled for the foreseeable future” due to financial issues and construction at the park.

A Connecticut-based dog wellness company, Get Joy, stepped up to help fund and organize this year’s parade.

“It’s a celebration of joy, creativity and the unbreakable bond between humans and their four-legged best friends. It’s basically the Met Gala for the Canine Community. We’ve been overcome by the amazing display of support from our community, so call the pup-arazzi: the show will go on!” said Fern Watt, a writer and communications officer for the Tompkins Square Park Dog Run, which organizes the canine parade.

The parade will be held on Oct. 21 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m

It would have been the end of a 30 year tradition if the parade was cancelled. The event this year will have a formal parade route instead of gathering in the park. Organizers said that last year’s East Village festival drew about 8,000 spectators to the park. One volunteer, Joseph Borduin, who has run the event for four years, said that support has been coming from around the country for the event.

What started as a small gathering among friends has ballooned into a cornerstone of New York City’s Halloween season, drawing thousands of spectators to the East Village to marvel, coo and laugh at creations that somehow become more elaborate every year.

A victim of their own success, organizers past and present say a formal route through the East Village was needed to accommodate growing attendance and interest.

It costs more than you might think to put on this shindig.

Mr. Borduin said he had been planning for this kind of growth since last year’s event, when thousands of people tried to cram into the small park and spilled out onto the streets. At one point, the police had to close the park.

But the expansion plan hit several snags over the past year. For months, Mr. Borduin had asked for meetings with necessary city agencies, including the Parks Department and the police, to no avail, he said.

When Mr. Borduin found out last week that he was still expected to pay the $45,000 needed for permits, on top of $10,000 for a stage and a $6,000 fee for the parks department, he said, he decided to call the whole thing off. The obstacles, including leading the efforts by himself, were too much, Mr. Borduin said in an interview punctuated with barks from the dog run.

That is even with help from the mayor’s office in cutting permit fees.

Borduin said the turnaround “made me believe in miracles again.”

New York City could use some miracles, right? Times are tough and the city is a disaster with the crime in the streets and the problems brought on by its sanctuary city policy. The city needs a little light-hearted fun for a good cause. Let’s hope the turn-out is the biggest and best ever and the event raises lots of money for maintenance and improvements in the dog run.

Photos from the Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade #NYC pic.twitter.com/j9vXRD6XaM

— Max Guliani (@maximusupinNYc) October 24, 2021

There were so many good boys at NYC's Halloween dog parade https://t.co/WrGBnZdT9z pic.twitter.com/6Q0VM0FkgS

— The Verge (@verge) October 24, 2016