Women (and Men) Who Run With the Dogs, now with POLL
Mon Feb 19, 2007 at 09:36:01 PM PDT
I walk my dog in the only (to the best of my knowledge) off-leash city park in the state of Wyoming. The land was donated to the city of Casper by the doctor-rancher who homesteaded it to be used as a sort of "as is" park for the enjoyment of nature. The park encompasses about 30 acres of river bottomland with cottonwood, Russian olive, grey willow and bar willow the dominant tree species, with a few boxelders thrown in. Someone planted grape hyancinths and crocuses a long time ago, and they are naturalized now and spreading where they can find a likely spot. The city paved the ranch two-track that used to wind along the river and made it into a walking and biking trail, joining it to the several miles of trails that cross back and forth over the North Platte. Somewhere along in time they made the park off-leash, and the dogs of Casper have been loving it to death ever since.
More on the other side of the tree.
By the way, I am figuring up the amount of poop that gets deposited on that acreage every year. I know at least 51 of the dogs who are brought there to walk damn near every day, say 340 days of the year—some of us are all-weather walkers and some are fair-weather walkers—and taking that into consideration and the estimated weight of the average dookey deposit (6 ounces), that gives me a figure of aproximately 6,503 pounds of poop. That’s pretty amazing, isn’t it, over three tons of dog turds a year?
That little bit of information aside, what continually amazes me about the dog walkers is their resilience and comraderie. They are mostly women, mostly over 50 and mostly widowed or divorced with grown children. Almost all of them have at least two dogs and of the two one is usually a stray or an adoption from the local rescue or animal control unit. All the women have stories of course—deaths and losses, triumphs and jokes. Their dogs greet each other like long-lost war buddies and have stories themselves. Most began life as abused throwaways but have thrived under the lavish love of their present people. For example, Lily, a tiny mutt of speculated parentage, found her person by staying in his unfenced yard for a week and staring in his windows until he agreed to allow her into the house. He was in the grip of grief for his just-deceased wife of 52 years and the little dog has been his protector ever since. He still drinks, but lots less than he did before Lily came into his life.
Downey the chow-retriever mix is now a bit more shy of cars since one of his people ran over him with a truck. $2,000 worth of medical bills later, his is frolicking like a puppy again, even though he has gained most of his lard-butt back. Royal sister Jasmine is stand-offish but she will let me scratch her back as long as I give her a cookie for the privilege. The newest pooch in that family is Mack, an unclaimed stray who chose their front porch on which to live on a streetful of others just as inviting--he new where salvation lay. Their female walker-person is Wendy, whose close sister Kay was paralyzed in a fall and then succumbed to pneumonia last year.
Butch, a woman whose two standard poodles are apropriately named Cassidy and Sundance, has been married and divorced twice and has a daughter who won’t speak to her for some reason, so we all speak to her as if she were our own mother because she would be a great one to have. She makes up dozens of bags of treats to give away at Christmas to the dog-walkers—the poodles test every potential treat themselves for suitability. She makes her rounds up and down the trail in a yellow nor’easter like the captain of a canine shipping line. When she stops to give out treats, the pooches swirl around her like so many gulls on chum, taking turns, slobbering, barking and just generally enjoying being dogs. Butch’s abusive first husband’s name was Bill Cruce and she invites all of us, when we feel an urge to curse to say, "Damn you, Bill Cruce!"
Gomer is a singular dog. He is a Petit Griffon bleu d’Gascogne, probably the only one in the state. Imagine the very large head of a Bassett but with Beagle-length ears, stuck on the body of a Bassett but speckled like an Australian Cattle Dog and with slightly longer legs and you have Gomer. He came from the local shelter and had been adopted thrice before Judy got ahold of him, and was always returned because he was virtually unmanageable. He could vault a 5-foot chain link fence with his stumpy legs and take off running in a blur of speckles and flapping ears. But Judy never faltered. She built the fence higher. Gomer leaped it. She put up an electric dog fence. Gomer went through it. She put up a stronger cattle fence, and Gomer finally got the idea and decided to stick around to see what trouble he could get into at home. He weighs 64 pounds, all of it concentrated on the feet he is standing on you with. He loves the water and swims like an otter. His tail, which is extraordinarily long, serves as a rudder as he motors about in the river. When he goes under, he clamps his ears to his head and snuffles air out through his nose, as if he is clearing a snorkle. He is dedicated to Judy now, (mostly) coming when she calls him. Housemate Tess, a curly-tailed Border Collie, tells him constantly and in loud tones how stupid she thinks he is, and he takes it as a compliment by back-talking with a chorus of baying.
Another Judy sports a matched suite of black Skipperkes named Chewie and Baby. Incongruously, Chewie is a female and Baby is a male. These tiny bearcats roll up to friends like a gentle wave, but crash against all enemies like a riptide. The aforementioned Gomer once bullied a mutual friend, the rowdy standard poodle Dickens. Baby has never forgiven him, and gives Gomer a piece of his mind and some of his teethmarks whenever the two cross paths. Gomer occasionally takes Baby’s head into his mouth as a reminder that Skipperkes were a favorite food of Barbary Corsairs.
Mayzie the Fat Lab walks Hank while Fritzie, Hank’s wife, trails along behind, singing. Often Mayzie will spot a squirrel and pull so hard on her retractable than Hank must let go or be pulled over into the chase. How an 110-pound black Labrador can vanish into the riverside thickets so quickly and silently is still up for debate, usually while a posse of walkers combs the park in a sometimes lengthy search.
Ren walks Ranger, Tracy traces Aurie, Tad in a red snowsuit sing-songs for Jet. There is a girl on skates whose Italian Greyhound rides adrape her shoulders when the pavement gets too hot. Another Italian named Rocket shoots past wearing a red cape, like some pin-legged super hero. An ancient Dachsund who has forgotten my name as I have hers models custom-made Dachsund coats on cold afternoons. Sierra floats though the crowd like a white snowcloud, her youthful teeth in a perpetual smile of joy. Roswell the "Australian Curly Ridgeback" TM, has trouble ignoring geese. Her Keeshond housemate Zoe has trouble even making her brain go. Their person Nancy drives a schoolbus yellow Hummer and wears the kind of flourishy clothes one would expect of a graphic art instructor. Jake the Rather Short Border Collie will fetch and rip apart any threatening stick and bark for treats until his person Dale shouts even louder at him to shut up. Jake complies for at least 20 seconds. Dale is 70, diabetic and arthritic and he spits when he walks. He drives a Jeep Wrangler with a winch and often takes Jake into the mountains for longer hikes. Someday neither will return.
Pam and her mutt Maggie tool up and down the trail for exercise mostly, as Pam is hard to catch up to, and Maggie won’t wait for love too long. In the summer Maggie walks upriver and swims downriver, as cool as she pleases. She carries rocks in her mouth.
Shadow the Border Collie climbs trees. One afternoon his person was chatting on her cell phone while he stood 20 feet above her on a cottonwood branch dropping sticks on her head. He can carry 40 pound logs, twice his own weight.
There is a Rott named Cujo, another named Dixie and another whose name is unknown to me because I can’t escape the tragedy of the dog’s back being so bad he can hardly walk.
Cowgirl is a Golden Retriever, Lily is a Boxer-Shar Pei and Murphy is an over-sexed Staffordshire. They are Audrey’s selections. Audrey is a little over-sexed herself, and dreams of younger men of all colors.
For Stub you need a catcher’s mitt, because this little Corgi-Australian Shepherd atlas missile comes at you like he was shot out of a cannon and once caught, dissolves into a wiggly-squiggly furry worm whose swishy tail is the equivilent of a canine smile machine. His person is incongruously the best-dressed woman in the park, with nary a hair out of place.
My dog, Lily Langtry, is the Most Beautiful Dog In The Park. Her story sounds like some sort of canine Grapes of Wrath. She came from Wisconsin in a Ford station wagon with 6 puppies, a pregnant pitbull, 3 kids, a pregnant human and that human’s mate, and when the car broke down and the humans ended up in the mission, Lily ended up with me. She thinks she is a coyote, and might very well be. I allow her to think anything she wants, because she is beautiful and because she is 13 years old.
On any day in the Dog Park, somebody is going around with bags and picking up all the poop. The city doesn’t do it and some walkers don’t either, even though it’s the law and the park is just upstream from the city water treatment plant intake. There are stations where empty blue dookey bags can be had for free and full bags left in a sanitary bin, but still there is poop everywhere. Butch picks up poop three or four times a year, and organizes a clean-up day every spring. There is a guy who, on his own, comes with a galvi garbage can on a little wheeled cart and picks up poop for a couple of hours. You can hear the cart squeaking as he comes up the trail. He doesn’t walk the park unless it is to pick up other people’s responsibilities while he listens to the football game through his earbuds, and he doesn't own a dog at all.
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