Foster gets the mirror treatment
Obviously I could totally write a million stories about the dog run but I feel like maybe a million stories have already been written about dog runs. I am shocked there is not a McCarren Park dog run tumblr, so large do those personalities loom, and I am not talking about the dogs here.
I will tell you this one little moment from this weekend about the woman who had a dog who humped everything in sight, and peed on someone’s bag of vegetables from the farmer’s market, what a sweet little nightmare he was. His owner walked so erectly in her sundress and pricey flats I could only imagine she had studied dance for years and gave it up only because of an injury and also because she felt a calling for the law, and now she has become a terrible person because she didn’t follow her real dreams, and also when you are a lawyer you do not get to wear a tutu, not ever ever ever, not even for one second of one day, and it is a tragedy.
Anyway her dog was humping this tiny fluffy little puppy and her owners were asking her to remove her dog and she wouldn’t do it, she was blaming them for not having their dog fixed, and how dare they come to a dog park with an unfixed dog, and this is what was going to happen and it wasn’t her dog’s fault. And basically all they wanted was for her to curb her dog and keep him away from their dog and she flat out refused, and words were exchanged, nothing was resolved, and when Foster and I left, one of the owners was standing between his dog and her dog and she was off in the corner chatting with someone, probably about the law and definitely not about ballet, even though obviously it is always running through her head as a dramatic backdrop to everything else on the planet.
Listen, also? I don’t get how people just walk up to dogs and shove their hands in their face. I haven’t had a dog regularly in my life since high school but I still remember that you ask an owner if it’s ok to interact with their dog and if they’re friendly, and also you hold your hand out away from their head gently and if they want to sniff you they will and if they don’t, then just leave them be. Also there was a woman in the lobby of my building last week who I think might have been drunk, and while we were waiting for the elevator I was practicing with Foster on his sitting, and she screeched “Sit” and pointed at him, and I wanted to bite her finger off, but only the law prevented me from doing so.
But there is one block I really love, where I always have the best interactions with people, and it is right outside this deli in my neighborhood. Foster likes to bark at the bigger dogs (what a genius), and there always seem to be bigger dogs around who are really amused when this happens, as are their owners, who are patient with Foster, and kindly let him bark and sniff for a bit. Last week I tied him up outside the deli and ran inside to get something, and then another dog owner did the same with his dog, and we both paused for a moment and watched our dogs bark at each other on the security television. “Best show on TV,” said the other owner. (He said his dog was a rescue too, and he’d had her for seven years, and she still hadn’t totally calmed down.) A couple of neighborhood guys stood and watched the dogs, laughing, so now I was watching them watch my dog, and while it was not officially meta it felt like something similar to it, a cousin to meta anyway.
When I went outside I chatted with the neighborhood guys who were still cracking up over the two dogs barking at each other, or, more specifically, my dog barking at the bigger dog. “He’s crazy, I know,” I said. “He’s half muppet, half tyrant.” I told them a bit of Foster’s history. “Just take him to the dog run every day, he’ll get there,” said one man. “He’s Napoleon Dynamite,” said the other.
I cannot even tell you how many little things I have learned about my neighborhood since I’ve had this dog. The times I leave my apartment are different, so now I know which neighbors like to sit out front on the stoop at night, and which people drop their dogs off at the doggy day care on Broadway before they go to work, and that there are people who run around the baseball field across the street every morning, lap after lap. I love the men who sit on the stoop next to the deli eating their egg and cheese on a roll every day who always give Foster a little whistle when we walk by. And did you know that someone is trying to petition the city to make that little stretch of grass by the baseball field into a legal dog run? I’m sure that none of this is useful information, but it is information nonetheless, details, as they say, and as a writer I can only be grateful for them. I would be nothing without details.
