Today was Nano’s first visit to the dog run. Stuart has had many valid concerns about taking him to one, which run along the lines of “our dog will just cower in the corner and be traumatized for life” and “what if we can’t get ahold of him?” and I sort of convinced him that much like kindergarten and taxes and hangovers, the dog park is just one of those things Nano has to get used to.
Besides, I said, we’re going to a dog run in Park Slope. (Because us poor relations to the south don’t have no dog runs). Yuppie dogs are well-behaved. (Unlike yuppie offspring).
So of course right at the moment we entered the dog run on 5th Avenue and 4th Street, about six enormous dogs converged on Nano like he was a juicy hock of ham. Two of them were puppies, and puppies have one favorite activity in this world which is batting other dogs about the head with their mammoth paws. Each of which is the size of Nano’s head. Which goes over with Nano like a lead balloon. A lead balloon TO THE FACE.
Two minutes into the dog run as I stood as calm-assertively as possible near Nano while he defended himself best he could against the Dread Puppies, I managed to steal a glance at Stuart’s face. On which was written plain as day that ALL HIS NIGHTMARES WERE COMING TRUE. And that this was maybe just a little bit of ALL MY FAULT. I mean, there they went! With the teeth! Right to the scruff of his neck! And Nano just kept slinking off like maybe if he shrunk himself to the size of a neighboring wood chip these monsters would leave him alone.
It took about five assaults from the Puppy Death Brigade for Nano to start standing up for himself and putting his own dukes up, showing his own admittedly tiny under-utilized snarl. And we kept stepping between the Giant Terrorizer, Tie, and his slobbering henchman Casey, when they got too roughly playful. I’ve watched dogs play for years and have a pretty good idea of what’s acceptable play and what’s not, but the trial by fire for both Stuart and Nano was a different story. A story that sounded a lot more like ‘naaaaaaam, maaaaan.
About twenty minutes later, the Puppy Carousel of Doom started to exit the park. Probably because their owners, to a man, were mortified that their dogs were ganging up on this fluff of a dog in his skull-and-bones sweater that was fooling NO ONE. Nano by then was pretty well defending his back and neck and total lack of balls. And then this giant loped into the ring:
And I guess when you’re fresh from the Gladiator Puppies, a hundred pound Great Pyrenee isn’t that scary? Nano spent a few minutes trying to figure out why the couch was outdoors and sniffing his butt, and then put up his dukes and got into the game.
We’ll get him to earn that Jolly Roger on his back yet.
Stuff I’ve been doing instead of blogging: cooking stews and taking walks and cuddling nano and watching movies and rolling with the punches and wearing less makeup and making it count and reading cryptonomicon and doing my part and eating my veggies and passing open windows and listening to feist and making plans and holding hands and going on long walks and getting involved and cutting out sugar and thinking up schemes and wearing boots and giving out hugs and basically, kicking asses/taking names.
Any questions?
Sometimes at the beginning of a writing session I like to crack my knuckles by knocking out vignettes. I might make it a habit of posting them here every now and again. This one clocked in at seven hundred words. If anyone’s interested, I might post the 500-word version later.
Dan woke up, like always, at seven. Time was, he could doze back off on weekends but since there wasn’t such thing as a weekend anymore, it was up at seven. Winter days like today, the cold white light would come in all bent from the blinds. He got that feeling like the floor was going to be cold, so cold, and it made him want to go back to sleep but there was nothing for it. He was awake. Susan exhaled long and low beside him, asleep, earplugs against his snoring. So she said.
From the Mayfly project, my twenty four words for 2007:
Hated job, found better. Cut hair. Moved to Brooklyn. Summered. Quit smoking. Went to Catskills. Dog! Dog! Wrote, procrastinated, wrote. Liked myself this year.
From Flickr, favorite moments, faces, and places for 2007:
Altogether, not too shabby.
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