Matthew Gilbert - Off the Leash: A Year at the Dog Park

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For Tom, and for Toby

My caravan

Amory dog park remains a safe haven for dog owners and dogs, a place that, ideally, is free of self-consciousness and judgment. And so, to preserve the inviolability of that sweet state, I have disguised the people and the dogs and created composites. I have changed names, facial features, hair color, snout sizes, and breeds. I have also altered chronology to form a dog park mash-up, a re-creation of a year. I hope Amory people recognize the characteristics I portray but none of the characters.

contents

a cast of characters

Hayley, With the Brave Armor

Stewie, the Burnese Mountain Role Model

Nash, Who Pitches Irony

Bertha the Golden Love Bucket

Margo, Mother of Us All

Travis, Lord of all Balls

Ky, Stoner Poet and Poop Strewer

Trixie, She of the Raw Diet

Drew the Guy

Chester, Ridgeback Mix and Loyal Bro

Not-Sweet Charlotte

Sugar, a Whippet With Ribs and Teeth

Cell Phone Lady, Her Shoulder to the Wind

The Westie Misses Hope and Midge

OTHERS:

Officer Marvelous

Saul the walker

Noreen, who talks TV

Me: One of them.

I like to read books on dog training. Every sentence is a riot.

E. B. White

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.

Plato

introduction

Even though its morning, the sun is giving everythingthe browning hillside, the faces and jackets of the dog owners, Tobys waggling blond bodya thick golden late-afternoon tint. Its fall, and Im standing with a group of people in the great field at the local dog park, Amory, watching our city dogs run off-leash. Fallen orange and yellow leaves are getting kicked up by four or five of the dogs as they chase a swift Italian greyhound named Enzo en masse, none quite reaching him, none truly wanting to reach him and end the game. Enzo sprints forward like a flung rubber band, his limbs loose, all effortless thrust; the other dogs are his biggest fans, his paparazzi.

Im laughing out loud because Toby, my one-and-a-half-year-old preteen yellow Lab, has tagged on at the very back of the careening pack. Hes not built for speed, and on some level he seems to know it. Hes actually running in an inner circle of the packs circle, the wheel within the wheel, almost ready to cut across the middle to try to catch the It dog. Technically, hes just run-walking, his jaw slack, his soft brown eyes hypnotized by the prize, Enzo.

Tobys chunky face is so earnest, so fixed on the amazing Enzo and his legions, so obviously dazzled by the possibility of being the one to catch him that I am madly in love with him at this moment. His transparency is contagious, and I say, Look at that goose to the stranger standing next to me, not caring what he thinks. Just saying the word goose out loud feels luxurious. I feel a little like a parent, kvelling over how adorable my child is, like Mrs. Berger from my hometown, who always braggedeven to childrenabout how lucky she was because she had three wonderful kids. Shed say it like thray wundaful kidsss. So Im a shamelessly proud dog parent today. But mostly, I feel like a child, a happy boy cheering out loud about a game at the playground, unconstrained by my adult hang-ups and inhibitions, which are intricate and would have made Mrs. Berger plotz in her midi skirts and patent-leather boots.

All of a sudden, across the Amory field, a vision: Toby spots a gauzy, glittering dreamboat moving from the park entrance onto the grass, like a Hollywood starlet stepping out of a limo and onto the red carpet. He promptly drops off of the Enzo train, instantly forgetting the big chase in order to stare at his beloved Nellie, who is now jogging toward the crowd with her owner trailing behind her, her long legs in a moderate gallop.

Nellie is a tall fawn Great Dane, and she looms large in Tobys universe as the dog who will always gladly chase him around Amory, from the middle of the field, where dog owners often standits the overlapping outfields of two baseball diamondsto the bordering hillside and back. She is Tobys latest sweetheart. Most of the park dogs, like most of the people I know, prefer to be chased after; dog behavior and human behavior arent as different as the dog manuals might have it. There are dogs and people who must dominate every group theyre in, dogs and people who lash out because theyre fearful, and, yes, dogs and people who very much prefer to be the object of desirethe chasedrather than the more loving one that the poet W. H. Auden wrote about. But Nellie the giant, she just loves to gallop after Toby with her lanky legs cantering and her hanging jowls jiggling. She is a committed Toby chaser. And she never seems able to catch him, despite the length of her stride and the intensity of her aspiration. She trails behind and above him like a gigantic Disney balloon at the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade.

In an instant, Toby snatches up a dirty tennis ball left on the patchy grass and tears ass, and Nellie, with her sad, wise eyes and her black mask, falls in behind him as they enact their ritual. Theyve known each other for months, and theyve gotten their game down pat. They run in wide-open circles. I walk over to Nellies owner, Lucinda, and we laugh together as we watch them in the golden light. Weve seen this routine more than a dozen times, and it still pleases us.

And now its Toby dog in the lead, with Nellies dog close behind , Lucinda says in the voice of a sports announcer, holding her fist up to her mouth as if its a microphone. Tobys running for his life, but whats this? The great Nellie is catching up, having tired out her competitor .

She holds the mike up to me. Its Scooby-Doo running after Brian from Family Guy, I announce, making an analogy to the TV cartoon Great Dane and the TV cartoon yellow Labbecause everything in life somehow comes back to TV, right? I was a child of TV, I am the TV critic for the Boston Globe, and my thinking process is automatically wired to compare the world out there to the world on-screen. Every living thing, it seems, has some parallel to Saturday-morning TV or The Twilight Zone or Seinfeld. Ive got IMDb for brains.

But Lucinda, with thick purple-tinted glasses and close-cropped brown hair, looks at me with a tilted head and a squinched up Huhwhat? face, and I laugh some more and clap my hands. I feel playful out here on the Amory grass, yelling about a cartoon chase that sounds like pure nonsense to her, openly smitten with Toby and his little victory, unashamed of my lifelong inability to tell a joke. As with the dogs at Amory, improvising joy at our feet, dancing like Snoopy did on his doghouse under the stars, circling in a chase for the sake of a chase, my pleasure is unedited.

* * *

For most of my life, I was the last person on earth youd have expected to find malingering at a dog park, laughing openly like a fool with a muddy leash around my shoulders and with broken biscuits and poop bags in my pockets. I was that guy who rolled his eyes at people who treat their dogs like children. Dogs were dirty and scary, I felt, and I would cross the street or charge forward when faced with a person leading his or her dog on the sidewalk. I wasnt Cruella de Vil, but all my thoughts regarding dogs and dog people ranged from negative to indifferent.