Dogutante


Dogger went to her first Dog Park.

I had very low expectations of Dogger at the park. She presided to lower them on the car ride over by repeatedly trying to climb over the seat to get a better angle on Bandits ears. When she wasn’t yipping she was whining. I was starting to think she might just stay in the car.

Then we got there. I really began to think her and me and the dog world at large would be much better off if she just stayed in the car. Just getting her out of the car was a test of how much weight it would take traveling at what speed to knock me over. It isn’t much. Dogger was disappointing me and we hadn’t cleared the parking lot yet.

And then she saw the other dogs. It’s not a moment I want to dwell on, suffice to say there were dogs and dog owners scattering out of our wake as quickly as their four feet could take them. It was a like a Dog version of Twister or Bowling For Puppies. She’s big, she’s raucous and she’s heading for you! Run for your lives!

We finally got the Dog Park proper. Winston and Bandit had been taking a cue from Dogger and had been singing, but unlike Dogger they still remembered who they were and were walking like gentle dogs. Brodsky’s arm wasn’t torn from his body or anything. They were vocal but well behaved.

We paused before going further. Is this what we should really be doing? Are the dogs ready for this? Maybe we should just walk them, some where else maybe, like away from all these other dogs. We stood there and waited for an opening.

Finally, there seemed to be a break in the flow of small, eatable little dogs and we made our entry.

Winston and Bandit fit right in. They stood around for a while and then joined in the dog fun. Dogger was still making shrill noises and doing her best to separate my shoulder from my arm. Fun!

We walked around the perimeter to check out the space and scope out any likely targets. I wandered around looking at the owners. How can they be so calm? How are they not following their dogs around? How can everybody be so unstressed out? Don’t they know that Dogger is there? There were a lot of little snack sized ears wandering around and Dogger was licking her lips in anticipation of all the available ears to gnaw. I was checking my pockets for a stray antacid .

I was finally prevailed upon to let lose the Dogger. I waited for the yowls of the snacked upon and the shrieks of their people. And I waited. And waited.

Nothing. Dogger wandered around meeting and greeting and not eating! She spent most of her time sitting by me, but she would leave me to go sniff an interesting looking clump of weeds or say hi to a random dog. She wasn’t trying to eat any of them. She went up to the dog owners and sat very politely next to them and asked to be pet. She didn’t pee on anyone or jump up or freak out or any of the things she does routinely in real life. She just wandering up and took her seat, suggested that her head needed to be scratched or she wouldn’t be unwilling to be attended to, or not, sometimes she just came up and stood next to them. I was and am shocked.

I kept waiting for the other paw to fall – for some dog to sniff just a little too long, for a small dog to get too close and need its tender ears sampled, for Dogger to see a person who looked like they wanted a 100 pound dog to try to vault over their head…

Nothing. She wasn’t my dog. She was another dog, a good dog. She didn’t snap at anyone or join in any unpleasant altercations. She was an excellent dog citizen. She had a great time, I had a great time.