AT THE DOGPARK

A well deserved lecture.

Every day I take my dogs to the dog park. I have met good friends there, including Luiz. Luis is from Brazil. His family owns a coffee plantation and sells Café Richesse. This morning I met Luiz at the dog park with my three dogs. Luiz brought three dogs. We hadn’t seen each other in months and while the dogs ran around, Luiz and I talked. A woman arrived with a medium-sized mutt. The mutt ran around, ran up to Luis, jumped up and shoved him in the nuts. The mutt ran around, ran up to me and shoved me in the nuts. Happens all the time. Neither of us reacted. The whole time the woman stood away from us.

She called her dog, took it back to her car and returned to the dog park. She came up to us. She was a Gen Xer in slacks and shirt. “I want to know why you didn’t greet me when I entered the dog park,” she began. “Do you know how rude that is?”

Luiz and I looked at one another in astonishment. Greetings rise naturally from the situation. I have met many women at the dog park, usually when their dogs come up to me or my dogs come up to them. They stoop to pet Mack. “Oh she is so sweet!”

“Mack’s fifteen. She’s hard of hearing.”

They ask what kind of dog is Bob. “Krazenovian waffle hound.”

An older woman whose dog had been savaged by a rottweiler asked me if there was anything she could do. I told her to wear a whistle around her neck and when she saw unacceptable behavior to blast the whistle. She has thanked me profusely many times. Other women, especially young women, sit by themselves staring at their phones. They don’t want to be bothered.

I extended my hand. “I’m Mike.” She shook my hand. She informed us that she was a professor of sustainability at the local university and a proponent of social justice. She asked us if we understood how it was unacceptable for us not to greet her as she entered the park, how damaging to the fragile social fabric. She went on and on. Luiz and I kept our mouths shut. Me more than Luiz. Finally she left.