Dog park people: Part 1

A good friend once told me “I love dogs, but I hate dog people.” I think the worst kind of dog people, are dog park people. They are the ones who go to the same park, at the same time every day.

The first group of people you will encounter are the rescue snobs. They are the first to greet you because they want to be sure you rescued your dog too. And if you didn’t, they want to immediately start judging you. The first thing they ask is:

 “Where did you get your dog?” which is code for; “I hope you rescued that dog, otherwise you are contributing to the growing number of homeless pets. You may as well have birthed a litter of puppies yourself and left them in an intersection. You are an awful person.”

These people can be identified by their “Who saved who?” and the equality stickers on the back of their Subaru. Be warned.

Then there are the anti-pit-bull people. Most of the time, they are women over 40 who have small lap dogs and terriers that were never properly socialized. Their dogs are usually the instigators  and when it inevitably picks a fight, they like to say things like:

“Oh, my dog is just playing!”

“My dog has never acted like this before!”

“No, no fluffywuffykins don’t gnaw on that dogs face...”

“My dog could never pick a fight, it’s too little.”

The moment a pit-bull enters the park though, they scoop up their dog, and act like the world has come to an end. They’ll scooch close to the nearest person as they are leaving and say something along the lines of: “I saw that awful dog here last week, it’s so aggressive, it went after my little fluffywuffykins, and I thought that it was going to kill my sweet baby.” Any time a pit-bull is present, they make it a point to be within ear shot of the owner, and explain to anyone who will listen how dangerous they are, and how they should all be put down.

Then there are the first timers. They can be identified by the terrified look on their face, and the fact that they follow their dogs everywhere. Usually they don’t really understand how dogs play. We encountered one of these people on Saturday in fact. Her and her man had an adorable 4 month old Golden retriever. Their dog’s tail was perpetually wagging in circles, but this woman seemed like she was going to cry every time another dog approached her and the puppy. At one point, when Dalton went over to play, she frantically picked up her dog and said “You dog bite, play too rough!” We then had to explain that puppies could handle roughhousing, and that the biting, growling and running was all part of the fun. When she finally let her dog play (under her watchful eye), a man and his daughter were standing nearby, and the daughter said to the woman “This is your first dog, isn’t it?”

Out of the mouths of babes.