Its been awhile!! hopefully i can get back into the swing of things : )
for those of you who don't know, i actually own 4 pets (6 if you count the kids, 7 if you count Roger) they are:
Bleau: my 9 year old brindle bull terrier. (aka, the undie monster)
Katt: my 3 year old black rescue cat*
Toast: my calico faux Sphinx cat (aka, "the ripoff")
Hefewisen "Zen": my 10 month old doberman (aka mr. lickypants-obnoxticon)
*katt has no aka, because she doesn't even really have a first name so we never bothered labeling her with a second.
Zen, being 10 months old and 90 lbs, is going through his "i'm massive, full of energy, and incredibly obnoxious" stage, where i expect he will stay until he is about 2 years old. to curb his theatrical enthusiasm directed at our every movement, we try and take him to the dog park when we can, and walks in between. this normally does little to completely wear him out, but does make him tolerable for about 7 hours. Colorado springs is GREAT for dog parks, and recently we discovered a dog park of epic proportions located in the downtown area. its pretty much the Disneyland of dog parks. it sprawls over several acres, and is so big you can't actually see all of the fence line, and includes a few small hills and a creek that dogs can play in. there are bushes and trees, all with little dog made circles around them in the dirt. i actually get excited to go there and its not even for me.
On our latest trip to Dogsneyland, we went during the afternoon on a cloudy and overall chilly day. the park is always beaming with dogs, but there were more than i expected because of the weather. we took zen in, and let him lose to run like hell and let the air comb his ears. he did his normal thing, running, getting in other dogs faces, and being generally obnoxious. we were happy to see him taking it out on other people, because we know it makes him happy to do so.
one thing that always makes me nervous about the dog parks, are not the dogs, but the owners. being owners of the dopie-dobie that we have, we know that he is loving, charming, and an overall big pansy, but i know that's not always what the other dog owners see. i can see the nervousness sometimes. and that nervousness only amplifies when Zen displays the outward puppy nature of a dog that only has a lazy 9 year old bull terrier, and two extremely intolerant cats to play with at home. generally speaking, Zen is not too huge into other dogs. he goes around gruffing and jumping around with the other dogs when they are available, but he isn't so dog driven as to become aggressive over other dogs like my older dog bleau can (she is grounded from dog parks for that very reason) but he does have a tendency not to take a hint from other dogs when they are even less interested in him. it must 
be the kid mentality.
be the kid mentality. during a particular encounter of that nature, Zen was chasing around a Australian Shepard who was non-too thrilled about our dog's fascination with her. Zen likes to growl when he plays, we know this is a play growl, but when it comes from what appears to be a several year old adult dog, i must admit i am embarrassed by it. this was going on with the shepard. i will stress at this point, that zen was not trying to bite or fight with this dog, he is only running around after her, and "gruffing." she is running away from him, but in circles, and not appearing too frightened by him, just irritated. both dogs are out of any control we have over them, but raj and i are trying to get a hold of Zen and distract him away from this other dog, and her owner is calling her as well. i will also note that his dog is not listening to him any more then our dog is to us. after a mere 15 seconds or so of this encounter, the owner of the shepard, a hippie 20 something, turns to Raj and says "hey! get your fuckin dog!" *needle scratches on the record* whaaaaaat? is this guy for real? easy bro, its not that frickin serious. however we do, indeed get a hold of our dog, and before he gets any control over his i'll add. his dog finally comes over and he loudly praises her. it was undeserved of course since she didn't do anything fantastic, so this was obviously the "you're such a good girl and their dog is an evil monster." kinda praise he was directing at us, not her. we put zen on the leash, and by the time we were situated, he was already several yards away.
i'll admit i was embarrassed, but only for a few seconds. then i was furious. get your panties out of your ass you bleepity bleep bleep bleep!!!! i thought to myself. she was not hurt, she did not whine, she did not roll over in defeat while our dog tore at her. at most, he was being very boisterous and rowdy with her, and you have the arrogance to tell us, in the DOG PARK, to "get our fuckin dog?!?" i wanted so SO badly to walk over to him, i wanted even more badly for him to walk back into earshot of us. i even walked extra slowly from the park to see if we could cross paths, but of course we didn't. part of me wanted to yell and be a complete bitch about the whole thing. explain that when you get 80 dogs in one place you are going to have dogs that do not get along, and do not understand each other. and that unless his dog belonged to the queen of effing England, he had to business making demands of us, or telling us to control our dog when his dog was running around like a drunken maniac along with ours. the other part of me, just wanted to explain. he's a puppy, a big dumb puppy who didn't know she wasn't playing with him. he doesn't get to play with other dogs often, he's a doberman, but he is in no way vicious, anything to keep him from leaving with the stereotype in his head. but that's how it went down. now dobermans are just as he presumed, and i felt like a failure of a dog owner.
my official rant about this whole thing is this: dogs will be dogs, and if you cannot understand that, then maybe being a dog owner isn't a good look for you. i have had (on more than one occasion) a dog viciously attack Zen at the dog park. one instance with a very beefy pitbull that i actually had to pull off myself because his owner was like 19 and weighed a solid buck-five. she was mortified, but i said, hey, no worries. that dog could sense the unsure puppiness of zen and took advantage of the opportunity to dominate. it happens, cause thats how dogs work. Zen wasn't hurt, and never has been in any of the several encounters he's had with dogs that just don't play nice 100% of the time. obviously some dogs are more prone to conflict than others of course, and your dog may be a perfect angel around other dogs but you can't very well walk into a fenced arena full of carnivores and expect every dog will politely sniff butts, lap water with their pinky paw up and depart on good terms. dogs play rough, they bite, they play, they bark, its like being on a playground full of furry two year olds. it wouldn't be fair to say that any dog who does not have a perfect encounter with every other dog it meets has no business in the dog park. (although i understand that Bleau, and other dog aggressive breeds like her are not best suited for that environment) so, Mr. hippie-sensative-about-my-pooch-lameass, you and your dog can both suck it, cause i know zen meant no harm, and was no threat to your dog, and if your pooch is too delicate to interact with boisterous large breed puppies without you getting your man-panties in a twist, maybe yall should take up another hobby together. watercolors perhaps?
