the bark park

I spent the most entertaining hour of my week on Saturday at the "Bark Park."  Yeah, that's right, an off-leash sanctioned canine paradise where dogs can sniff the private parts of other dogs without inhibition. 

All joking aside, it was a delightful experience.  I'm going to make a sweeping generalization here and say that pet owners, specifically dog lovers, are kind, friendly and pleasant people.  I could not believe how just having that one thing in common, we all love our dog, was enough to unite a group of strangers in jovial conversation.  It was similar to that phenomenon of putting a group of women who have never met together in a room.  Assuming they have all had children, get them started on their labor stories and they will be occupied in dialogue for hours. 

Not only was Misha able to be the recipient of much dog socialization, she was patted and admired by the humans as well.  In fact, I think she rather preferred the affection of the people to the other dogs.  One male dog in particular was getting a little too frisky and I was proud of her for putting him in his place with a fierce growl. 

It was a good lesson for me about dogs. They are so much more like us than I realized.  They get excited, shy, nervous, irritated, bored and jealous too. 

If you have a dog I highly recommend you find the nearest puppy park for some quality pet time.