Mad Dogs

You know what would be good? If they had a column in the paper called What All Those Sirens Were About, it could say "If you live in X neighborhood and you heard a whole lot of sirens last night around X time, it was a warehouse fire" and it could go on "If you live in Y area and you heard a lot of sirens about X time, it was a burglary in progress" and "If you live in Z area, and you heard sirens at X time, they were going to a heart attack". It would also be nice if there was a web site out there that gave examples of local sirens this is an example of Town fire truck, this is the ambulance, this is the cop car. All the sirens are different in a city, the sheriff sirens are different from the highway patrol which are different from the city cops. We also have Capital Police and Dix as police too. I want to know who and what I hear so often.

I learned through my job that if you are involuntarily committed, you are picked up by sheriff's deputies and they cuff you and throw you in their cruiser and they will come and get you whenever they get the time. If you weren't suffering from paranoia and you didn't have a persecution complex, you will after some guy comes in the middle of the night and slaps you in cuffs. But on the other hand, you don't get involuntarily committed because you are little Mary Sunshine anyway. Maybe it makes you even more obnoxious because all of a sudden your paranoia seems justified. It would suck to listen to some guy and all the little voices in his head telling you they told you so.


On to another topic. A little.

I took Dogger back to the park today. One because she needed to get out a little and the ground there is very padded for her poor sore feet and joints, and two because I thought that the extreme cold would scare away the fair-weather park goers and allow Dogger to have a unfettered trip for once. And I was right, there were only seven or eight dogs there, the last time we went while it was warmer there were twenty-five and that's just too many and people just do not supervise their dogs the way they should. They aren't at a playground and their "kids" aren't little children, they are in actuality, very well armed, not very bright, full grown animals.

We weren't even through the gate when this smallish sized dog snarled at Dogger through the fence.And if Dogger had snarled back at the little beast the melee would look like Doggers fault. I had Dogger on the leash and she forgot about the little beast after we came in but the whole time I was thinking Dumb Dog! I've seen Dogger take a larger dog than you down to the ground for pulling that kind of crap with her before she was even through the gate .

I'm afraid my anxiety is beginning to affect her. She did a little playing but mostly she spent her time leaning hard into me. The couple of times she did go out and about I followed her because now I'm always worried about What If... and today she seemed kind of shy with the other dogs and not really invested in the play. She preferred the outer boundaries of the park, and part of me thinks Aimless wandering away from the other dogs is okay, it's safe and good exercise for us both. But on the other hand, It's really cold. Is this worth it? She can lean against me at home, she can wander in our own yard. I come out here and make the effort to be here because this is supposed to be fun for her and me. Is she having fun? Do I dare let her? in the past I've watched her joyfully join in to the dog park society and have a huge blast and I know it's had a positive effect on her.

Other dog owners have said that the park has made their dogs more agressive, but maybe that's just a by-product of being a dog around a lot of other dogs and dogs at play sometimes play agressively, "playing rough" and that is part of being an animal. The big dogs at the park play rough, Dogger is a big dog and she plays like one. The big dogs play rough and they get into it - little dogs and even full sized people have been known to get run over.

She has to be really pushed to get teethy, but, when she took down the dog at the gate that time, now months ago, we had been there less than a minute and I only turned my back to shut the gate. The other dog may have started it but Dogger was going to finish it.

That happened months ago. But lately, any agressive sounds at the park make me nervous and I'm making her nervous. I want us both to go and have fun.