What Animals Teach Us

joy

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Now that Obama has won the election, now that the Repugs are licking their wounds and are showing themselves to be very poor losers, we’ve got a new brand of politics at the dog park.

At the park now,  the losers sit at the far end, grumbling about why their party lost and talking incessantly about 2016. Seriously? We’re already discussing the presidential campaign of  2016? Meanwhile, the rest of us sit around in the shade, gabbing, tossing Frisbees and balls for our dogs, and notice that the snowbirds who arrive at the park now believe they own it. This means they believe a service sweeps in every afternoon and scoops up the dog poop (nope)   and that they have carte blanche – i.e., your dogs do whatever he/she wants to do in this wide open space.

Well, not quite. Today a young man arrives with two dogs, both of them intact males. The human is a horse person, seasonal, and has his dogs are on lead ropes, like what horses in training are accustomed to. But dogs are not horses, and as soon as he enters the park, Cody is all over his dog.

Cody – cooling off this past summer

Cody is a husky – affectionate toward the humans he knows, protective of puppies, endlessly playful. He doesn’t have an aggressive bone in his body. So Cody is ready to play with these two dogs as they come through the gate. The owner freaks out. He starts kicking Cody, then slaps him in the face and over the head with the lead ropes, shouting at him. A group of us are sitting in the shade as this is happening and are suddenly on our feet, moving collectively toward the gate.

Cody’s human, Karin, the paragon of non-confrontational, rushes past all of us, toward her dog  and this jerk who is slapping him and yells, “Hey, cut it out, he’s not hurting your dog!

And he isn’t. Cody is doing what all dogs do when fresh meat enters the dog park, sniffing, nipping, evaluating, playing the dominance game, I’m bigger and faster than you, chase me, c’mon, let’s play. Karin is a short woman, not exactly intimidating, and this horse guy towers over her. But she’s in his face, waving her arms, screaming at him and the man is somewhat taken back, you can see it in his body language.

“Your dog was going to attack mine!” he yells.

“Going to?” someone else shouts at him. “Pal, that’s like saying you shot the homeless guy who was going to rob you.”

He becomes really flustered, stabbing his finger toward Cody. “Get him outta this park, he’s dangerous.” He tugs on his dogs’ lead ropes, pulling them away from Karin, toward the middle part of the park, where some humans are still sitting, watching this spectacle.

“Her dog attacked mine,” he says, as if the humans in the shade are the jury. “You saw it, right?”

Colleen, whom we call the dog whisperer, just rolls her eyes.  “You bring  two intact males into the dog park, what do you expect?”

By then, I’ve back toward the sitting area to find Noah, but he’s standing under the tree, watching, wise enough to keep his distance from these disturbances. Cassie, who owns Willow, a border collie, just looks at me and whispers, “Spare me. Another Republican.”

Another woman who brings her three dogs daily to the park, turns to him and snaps, “You kicked Cody and hit him with the rope. That’s a fact. We all saw it.”

At this point, the horse guy gets really huffy. “Well, it’s obvious you’re all friends here. We’re leaving.”

And we’re all thinking the same thing: Don’t let the gate hit you in the butt on your way out, guy.

Most of these skirmishes at the dog park –  as in politics and in life-  happen because of the humans – not the dogs. Dogs seem to have an innate understanding about the rules of engagement where they can run free with other dogs, even dogs who are unfamiliar to them. When a new dog enters the park, the other dogs sniff, check things out, wag their tails – or don’t – and behavioral parameters are established quickly.

One of the honored traditions at the dog park involves an American bulldog, Diesel. He’s a gentle giant, an intact male owned by a Dutch woman who also brings her other two dogs. Here’re Diesel and Noah:

When the dogs in the park hear the woman’s truck pull into the parking lot, many of them they line up along the fence, waiting for Diesel.  He’s the star. Why? Because when his human lets him off the leash,  he tears along the outside of the fence, barking furiously, and within seconds, a pack of dogs inside the park are answering the call. For fifteen or twenty minutes, dozens of dogs race back and forth along the length of the fence, barking and howling and snapping at the wire mesh until they are all so exhausted they seek refuge and solace at the water bowls.

But if you take away the fence, the dogs just frolic and play.

The other day, a man with a young Ridgeback who runs daily with the Diesel pack, decided he didn’t like it and shouted at the Dutch woman to bring her dogs into the park. When she regarded him with puzzlement and pointed out that his dog runs daily with the pack that barks at Diesel,   he called the cops. And this is a guy who completely ignores his dog when they’re at the park. But suddenly, he doesn’t like what Diesel is doing so he calls the police?

Drama. A battle of human wills. We weren’t at the park when this happened, but Cassie told us about it over dinner one evening. “And oh, guess what?” she says at the end of her story. “He’s a Repub, too.”

I know what she means. But I also know some Republicans who treat their animal companions with the same love and attention they shower on their families and children. So maybe the political thing is too facile. But the lesson is valuable. As my dad frequently advised my sister and I, If you want to know what someone is really like, take note of how this individual treats animals, pets. It will tell you everything you need to know about whether you should invest time and energy in the relationship.

He was right. It has been one of my criterion ever since.