This is Not A Dog Park, Bitch.

As I write this, I cannot stress the importance of your input, advice and or criticism. So please add your fill.....


I'm a curmudgeon. it's no secret, folks. I feel it to the marrow, I fly the flag. I have had intermittent lucid hours of what others would calm calmness or clarity, or god forbid, happiness throughout the years and I love a good laugh just like everyone else. I would be much less of a man without humor. But my thought provoked reality normally teeters towards glass half empty, glass full of curdled milk or glass nowhere to be found. Years of therapy have uncovered the truth under my litany of excuses for it. The bitterness is not a pill swallowed for comfort or attention. Bitter is a large part of my personality. Oh, well.

So with that said it makes the next few paragraphs easy to write, consequences be damned.

Disclaimer: I like most dogs. I had a dog for 15 years that I think about more than often. I wish my living situation was one that would allow me to still have one, but it is not. So I'm stuck with these cats who shit indoors and keep me up at night. yet I still love them. This I am capable of admitting. As for canines, I think some have more positive features than the humans that take care of them. I think, just like humans, there are good dogs and bad dogs, that may or may not have been born that way. I encountered bad people and their horrible dogs today(one in particular).

I took my son to a local park at his request this afternoon. One we frequent, as it is close and he seems to like it. It is a park in the lovely idyllic-to-a-fault Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia. Lots of privilege, blue bloods and young couples with babies who can't quite handle anything more than a quiet street and a well deserved parking space. It is also a well known spot for people to bring their dogs and let them go nuts with balls, sticks and squirrels. However....nowhere does a sign exist proclaiming that this is allowed or not. So the dogs run free. That is the legality of it I assume.

We were doing our recreational business as well, using the stomp rockets that so many kids from ages 7-12 are enjoying these days. We were using fallen branches as markers to measure the length of how far each rocket flew after we "stomp launched" it. Now we already knew that dogs have smaller brains than humans. A dog sees a stick and he wants it, especially if he and his master had been playing fetch 30 or 40 yards away. My son doesn't like dogs because he has been pestered, chased and maybe threatened several times in his life by dogs, and each and every time it was a dog in the pit bull terrier family (what a surprise, a pit bull..Come at me pit bull owners, I'd be happy to argue the merits of any other breed vs. yours).

That said, a little brown terrier came out of nowhere at high speed and wanted the stick in my son's hand and started chasing him. My son was frightened and I shouted at him to drop the stick but he didn't hear me. After about 20-30 seconds he dropped the stick and the dog grabbed it and ran. The dog only wanted the stick. My son sat down and cried, scared and exasperated, complaining about the dog. When a dog is chasing a kid, 30 seconds is a lifetime.

My problem is not with the dog. My problem is that the owner who was 30 yards away, never moved, never told his dog to stop...just plain didn't do a fucking thing and the dog ran back towards him with the stick. The guy never said a word, never approached and never apologized. Now I don't know about you, but if it were my dog, leashed or unleashed and it started chasing a kid, I would have sprinted towards it and called it off or immediately leashed it or dragged it off by its collar until there was enough comfortable distance between the dog and the child. I would have felt awful and apologized profusely to the child and his or her parents.

But this guy failed to do any of that. So I yelled "Who's goddamn dog is this?" and he raised his hand as his dog returned to the fray 30 yards away. As I marinated in the glow of his stupidity, I put a hand around my ear and in mocking fashion yelled "What's that you say? Are you apologizing?" Just then his female friend or neighbor whom (I kid you not, was wearing her baby in a Bjorn) yelled back at me..."This is a dog park, Go home!"

Now this is just one of the thousands of reasons my faith in humanity pales in comparison to yours. This is not a dog park bitch. And if that dog had knocked my child over..if its paws or snout had come anywhere close to connecting to my son's person, I would have done everything in my power to maim that canine with my fist or foot. I would have beat it with the stick it ripped from my son's hand until it walked funny and shit blood for a week. I would do anything to protect him. And if you didn't have a baby attached to you, I would have headbutted some sense into you until you could whistle through the holes in your teeth line, and then called the cops on the owner of that dog and on myself for losing my patience.

But instead, I just walked away with my flustered son. I did go home. And I thought about how you would feel if a dog lunged at your papoose or was chasing your fat ass around while a small brained pit bull was nipping at your babie's booties.

I wondered as a curmudgeon, how much time I should devote to your stupidity and selfishness, and to the actions of your pal, the dog's owner. I wondered if I should write about it and ask anyone who reads it for perspective, rather than a pat on the back.

So that is what I'm doing.