The Right Park

For an introduction, I will mention something that has nothing to do with the topic of this post: I credit The Hip One for inspiring me to blog. I check his blog semi-irregularly (on the more "ir" side of regularly than merely "irregularly", rather than the opposite of "irregularly" which would be, well, "regularly"), and when he yatters so interestingly about "stuff" I feel, "well, hell! I can do 'stuff', too!" 'course he makes his 'stuff' interesting and I just, well, I do go on. 'nuf a that.

I go to the right park. It is exactly the right park because it is within walking distance and is spacious. There is grass, and there are trees. It has hillocks. It has wildlife: prairie dogs, interesting varieties of dinosaurs, coyote, and soccer parents. It is pleasant. I like it. My dogs like it. So it is the right park.

Sometimes, though, the wrong people go to my park.

I'm going to back up slightly and mention that this park is popular with dog owners. We're all fairly courteous -- we pick up after our dogs, we keep them on leashes unless they are so well behaved that they don't need to be, and when other people approach with other dogs, the leash-free folk are guarded and wary enough to leash their dogs if need be to avoid causing trouble.

I am going to take one more step back and mention that my son's dog, Lily, is a somewhat hyper-aggressive dog. She views pretty much every other dog as a possible threat, and she reacts by yipping and snarling. If she's off-leash, she'll charge at the other dog, nipping at them. If they react by fighting back, it can get fairly ugly. My own pair of dogs get excited by Lily and try to join the fray. It can be very challenging handling three dogs at once when they're all frenzied. You can imagine, then, that I am cautious when there are other dogs about in the park.

It's not difficult to avoid people with dogs. I stay alert. I plan my route through the park. I change direction readily when someone pops up on the horizon in my path.

One particular morning not long ago I entered the park and paused to untangle the leashes and survey the situation. I could see a cluster of people with dogs ahead of me, and some of them were leaving the group to head out. One woman with a large German Shepherd started coming toward me. I saw to my left a man with two small yippy dogs on leashes also coming toward me. I was trying to figure out the best route to take to avoid them all when, unbeknown to me, a man with a dog turned a corner behind me. Lily, already in an excitable mood from the sight of the other dogs, heard them and started charging, jumping, yipping. All three of my hooligans were soon tangling me up in the leashes, snarling at one another in their excitement and frustration and fear.

The man behind me moved away. He was not a dummy.

The man with the two small dogs veered away. He, too, was not a dummy.

The cluster of folk with all the dogs up ahead stared, but did not come closer. Also not dummies.

German Shepherd Woman, however, continued walking directly toward me. As she approached the Shepherd strained at his leash, barking. All I could do was brace, muscles straining, leashes cutting into my hands as my trio of combined 140 lb of fur and teeth and frenzy whirled about me.

I called out to the woman, "Please move away. They don't like other dogs."

She stopped, about 10 feet away from me now, her dog agitated. As she finally started to move away from me, tugging at her dog, she looked back and smiled and she said, "Well, honey, then you came to the wrong park."

Stupid woman. Stupid, stupid woman. I wanted to tell her she was a stupid woman, but all I could do was say, "No. It's the right park. I usually can avoid people like you."