Dog Park Delight

As the child of a mother whose formative years were surrounded by the reality of Polio and the accompanying fears of public places, I had resisted Dog Parks for many years. My thinking was that it was a place of potentially festering disease and canine folly and fights. I chose to lug around my 250 pounds of two Great Pyrenees by a series of fancy halters, gentle leaders, bungee cord styled leash accoutrement a safe distance from the plebeian strolls of less astute dogs and their owners.

And then last week's Arctic chill descended upon Northern New Mexico. The thought of walking the dogs in the frigidity was daunting. Somehow the thought of the dogs exercising themselves with me near by bound in a floor length down parka with my hood drawn tightly around my visage like the hooded character on South Park (Kenny) with my fluffy white Pyrenees darting to and fro unattached seemed appealing. What's more, I reasoned, what bacteria could survive such temperatures? And so, we strayed to the Dog Park, a large tree adorned area, with beautiful views of the mountains, pleasant and not to many dogs and well maintained dirt paths. Within a week my dogs exuberance became palpable. My 15 year old jogged merrily behind me. Both dogs drew in the scents of those dogs who had merrily passed by before them. They drew in the scents much like we tarry over our emails. Yes, my dogs stopped and sniffed for their Dogie Emails, and in so doing their batteries seemed to charge. If soaring spirits wards off disease, then whatever viruses abound in public dog parks seem to have a built in vaccination, the vaccination of sheer unbridled and unleashed canine joy.