Dog Rant: Obnoxious Australian Shepherd

I'm writing a novel. Though I've missed this blog, it's why I haven't posted for awhile. I am occupied and preoccupied with plot and character development and setting and some research. This is my second novel. My first, although it was represented by an excellent agent, didn't sell, even after making the rounds of myriad publishers. Some said, "Too literary." Some said, "Too mainstream." Many said, "No-one is interested in the North." It was a novel about the Yukon: my life there with my husband and four young children for almost all of the '70's. He was a lawyer-white-water-canoeist-mountain-climber-glacier-skier. I was the curator of an art gallery. We had lots of adventures in that wilderness environment but editors never got them. Maybe if I had written it as a memoir...but then I couldn't have told the lies I told...

This second novel, also inspired by true events, is about the brutal rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl and it will explore how her family recovers from such an atrocity. My research has taken me into the dark and appalling world of pedophilia which has been necessary to understand the motives of a man who would desecrate a girl-child and then slay her. It's difficult to read and write about.

But today I wanted to rant. You can tell how strongly I feel about this if it's taken me away from my "serious" writing. But there is a dog at the dogpark who is ruining my life...or rather, he is ruining my time there. I look forward to the dog park. I get to mingle with some likeable people and my dogs can let loose, thus exhausting themselves and freeing me later on to get things done. But this dog...THIS DOG...is a menace. He's an orange and white Australian Shepherd called Rusty, (name changed to protect the guilty) with one white and one blue eye. Rusty immediately spots me from the gate and he runs and hurls himself at me! All because I hold a "chuckit" and ball. He's learned from previous days that I toss the ball for my two toy poodles, Gracie and Hutch. But not with Rusty around. He prances and bounces and leaps on me trying to snatch the ball. Sometimes he actually grabs it. But then he immediately drops it. And slinking backwards, head down, body tense, he goes into chase stance. My two poodles are also at my feet in similar stances, eyes glued on the ball. What do I do? Rusty is jet-propelled. Rusty will get the ball if I throw it. My dogs, knowing they can never beat him, (Believe me, they've tried), look up at me bewildered and disappointed.

Rusty tears back, drops the ball and repeats his dancing, leaping and lungeing act. "Throw it again! Throw it again!" If I do, the whole scene becomes a rerun. Over and over. And I end up spending my time at the dog park exercising SOMEONE ELSE'S DOG! If I leave and walk around the perimeter with my dogs, Rusty follows the whole way...you got it...dancing and prancing, leaping and lungeing after the ball. My guys trot loyally behind me wondering why this interceptor keeps succeeding.

He keeps succeeding because his owner doesn't come and take Rusty away! He just stands on the side, or walks several paces behind me and keeps yelling, "Rusty, off! Rusty, leave it!" As if that does any good with this manic beast. But does he stop Rusty from getting the ball? No! Does he throw his own ball for Rusty? No! (Well, he tried but Rusty simply ignored his throw and went for mine.) I hate feeling so angry over a dog but this one is interfering with my way of being and my dogs' ways of being. He's actually controlling what we do. And worse, his owner doesn't seem to get it. He seems to think it's fine that his dog flings himself against a person, that he is actually stealing not only something that doesn't belong to him, but activity that shouldn't be his. And I don't get why he doesn't get it. Is he simply rude? Or insensitive? Does he think his dog is cute and funny? (He's not. Not to me, anyway.) Does he feel bad that he can't control his dog? Or does he feel entitled to have his dog act in any way he wants to, simply because, hey, it's a dogpark and there are no real rules?

I wish I knew how to be aggressive and yell at the guy, "Get your damn dog out of my face!" Or.."If your dog steals my dogs' ball again, I'll.....!" The horrible thing is I have actually felt like whacking Rusty with the "chuckit", especially when he almost knocks me over, and that simply isn't my style. But he makes me feel really helpless. And helplessness breeds anger.

Don't tell me to throw another ball for my dogs. They won't go after it. They're inured to the one Rusty wants.

I suppose I should be more generous and simply "let it go" and toss the ball for Rusty. It's not such a big deal in the scheme of things. That would be OK if my dogs at least ran for the ball too. But with Rusty as competition, they back off. He's three times their size and that much faster. So, at the expense of their exercise, Rusty gets his.

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