NILES — A Riverfront Park South staple will be leashed up and walked to its northern counterpart at 6 p.m. this Thursday.

Ruff & Tumble Dog Park is co-hosting that evening’s Niles Summer Concert Series, along with local band, Little Something. The summer-long series pairs local musicians with local nonprofits of their choice to provide music and social awareness to audience members.

Ruff & Tumble, also the name of the nonprofit managing the park, just placed black chain link fences around a 1.5-acre portion of Riverfront Park South last summer. Now, judging by the number of doggie bags picked up onsite, founder and director Katrina Andrews, of Niles, said that about 100 dogs visit per week.

Ruff & Tumble park is meant to serve as a fun, freeing space for dogs, with two separate areas for lighter and heavier breeds, Andrews said.

“It’s great for the community, like our educational end of it,” she said.

The educational end is where Ruff & Tumble, the organization, comes in. The group of volunteers maintains the park and manages its budget, but it also hosts different training events and educational programming for dogs and people, both owners and non-owners.

“We’ll make better canine citizens,” Andrews said.

Later this summer, Ruff & Tumble will team up with dog training organization, ECHO Club, Inc., of Buchanan, to host an agility dog training class. Then, in early August, it will host a mixer, where dogs can be adopted and a dog whisperer will be present.

Right now, though, Andrews said her organization needs donations for signage to be placed around the park.

“We want signs around the dog park to teach people, basically, to speak dog,” she said, “to know their dog better, to interact with their dog better, to approach a dog you don’t know.”

She also wants to install a bulletin board that will provide information on dog health and free and reduced-cost animal clinic offerings.

Andrews said donations received at the Niles Summer Concert Series will go toward these initiatives.

While Andrews hosts her Ruff & Tumble booth near Riverfront Park’s amphitheater, Little Something will play on stage.

“We chose [to partner with Ruff & Tumble] because we’re all just animal lovers,” said bassist David Mortimer.

The band is composed of members whose hometowns are from either South Bend or Edwardsburg. It plays original and cover songs from genres such as rock, country and folk.

Little Something came to be thanks to a Craigslist ad. Co-frontman Scott Vaerewyck said he was looking for a musical project to join when he came across an ad by Mortimer, who was looking for bandmates.

While Mortimer’s band was no longer in the works, it drew Vaerewyck and Mortimer together. Later, Mortimer found singer and multi-instrumentalist Anna Smous at a talent show his son was in.

“Right away, we just harmonized,” Vaerewyck said. “Our voices meshed, and our personalities meshed, and the rest is history.”

After hearing Smous and Vaerewyck sing together, drummer Tony Leininger was enticed to join. He and pedal steel guitarist Randy Norris rounded out the group.

“It’s a kinship. It’s a friendship, where it’s not about you anymore,” Vaerewyck said. “It’s bigger than you. You can’t let each other done.”

Now, Little Something is five years old. This August, it plans to celebrate the release of its future first album at the Acorn Theater in Three Oaks, where the band had its first break. It was a finalist in the venue’s songwriter competition.

Mortimer said that Little Something plans to play a number of original songs off the album at Thursday’s concert. Mortimer said to look out for a powerful song written by Vaerewyck about his dad, who passed away 10 years ago.

Both Mortimer and Vaerewyck said that playing at community event, like the Niles concert series are much better than playing business venues like bars, where bands tend to come second to a customers’ attention.

“We’ve all done the bar thing before,” Mortimer said. “The music that Scott writes has very good lyrics, so it’s nice to have an audience that appreciates that.”