Bad Night to Choose to go to the Park

It's been a strange day with quite a few people being slightly bitchy to me. I was extra polite and friendly as a test to find out if I was being bitchy and they were being rude right back. No, I think everyone else was just in a bitchy mood today.

I took Oliver to the park tonight. The two very big and beautiful Rhodesian Ridge-backs were there. I don't care much for their owner ever since I watched him take his sweet time in calling them off a man who was in the park looking for his friend's pair of missing glasses. I will point out that the man being cornered was black and the big, fancy expensive dog owner was white (who today I saw was showing off his tazer to another Macho Man at the park). I couldn't help but feel that the Rhodesian owner was trying to make some kind of statement by letting his dogs frighteningly corner this man.

The Macho Man looking at the tazer roughhoused with his dog and the ridge-backs. His dog was a very nice, rather large dog and he was having fun roughhousing with his owner and the other dogs. Oliver is a bit of a wimp. When he heard the others playing, he went over and barked from a safe distance.

I'm not sure what that means. I don't know if he's yelling, "Hey, keep it down over there!", or something more like, "I wanna wrestle too, but I'm afraid I might break a nail!"

Macho Man turned to Oliver, "Hey, you want in, little guy? You wanna play?" He then approaches my dog. My dog which clearly does not want to participate as he is keeping his distance from the fray. The man, who had been physically shoving the other dogs about (which is fine cause they pups dug it) gives Oliver a slight shove on his shoulder. Oliver lets him know with an aggressive bark that he doesn't like that so much.

Macho Man is unimpressed and when Oliver approaches Macho Man's dog to say hello, Macho Man says, "Hey Digger (or whatever asshole's dog was called), Oliver wants to play. Give him a good punch to the side of the face!"

Digger continues playing with the others dogs and Oliver proceeds to do his usual humping thing. As advised by Paul the dog whisperer, I don't involve myself when Oliver does this. The dogs will work it out and they will let Oliver know when he is annoying them.

Since Oliver doesn't actually touch the other dogs when he's doing his pelvic thrusts, the dogs often don't even notice him there. Once he does this quite a few times and no dogs have barked him or nipped at him to stop, I step in and start telling him to quit it. It's annoying, watching him work on his six-pack in public like that.

I didn't get to that point this evening. "Is your dog fixed?" asks Macho Man. I tell him yes, he is fixed and I was told to leave him be when he does that. That the dogs would work it out. I will point out now that Oliver only does this at the park.

"Yeah, that's not right," he says, "Y'know, that's not a very good way for the dogs to get to know each other. You know, it's just not right socialization." he says. Right, because sniffing ASS is so much more dignified. It's at this point that he attempts, again, to roughhouse with my dog. The dog who just made it clear that he does not want to be messed with. Only this time, the idiot PULLS HIS TAIL! When Oliver turns and give him another aggressive growl, the guy says, "Whoa, chill out. See, that's not right!"

He goes on to tell me that he and his wife have talked to their dog since he was a puppy (this feels to me like he's implying I have been ignoring my dog for years), and now that he's older, people say he has such a great personality and he wonders if he'd have that personality if they hadn't talked to him so much, "You know I don't know what he'd be like if we hadn't socialized him properly." Oliver attempts to hump his dog, his dog tells him no, "Yeah, good job, Digger, see, he's not having any of that. That's not right."

It's at this point that I casually start to walk back to the entrance of the dog park, a good fifty yards away, to leave. When I turn and see that Oliver is still chillin' at the other end where all the dogs and their owners are sitting, I call him with one whistle.

At which point, my untrained, un-socialized "not right" dog lifts his head, sees me, and with zero hesitation, B-lines straight to me.