The Dog Park

After a successful outing
Her Royal Highness the Newf
relaxes in her usual fashion.

Yesterday afternoon the Baroness von Roughenhausen came snout to snout with her first Newf since coming home with us. What's weird is the other Newf belongs to another female psych prof who teaches more or less in the same area I do. Needless to say, she has the job I wanted. Bygones. She's nice and so is her Newf. Katy acted as though she knew right from the get-go that there was something special about this other black bear, a 9 month old female. Play bows, barking, swats, hip checks, slobber shakes and the like ensued.

We got a tip that there was a meeting up of fellow dog lovers and their dogs at a makeshift "dog park" on the mostly fenced off playground of a local elementary school.

We weren't sure what we were getting in to when we went this morning because Katy is so skittish. We walked up and I thought "uh oh." There were about 30 dogs and just as many people. Talk about a recipe for disaster.

But, intrepid we were. We charged ahead, took Katy off of her leash, and let her decide what to do.

She was instantly greeting by a swarm of smaller dogs who seriously freaked her out. They ran circles around us, Katy hiding behind me then Sleyed, then me, then more circles around the whole pack. We watched and waited and eventually she calmed down. Her hackles relaxed; she ventured off and all of the rest was smooth.

She came snout to snout with the other Newf and took down some small fries. At one point she got hip checked by a lab. She whipped around as if to say, "uh - huh what was that?!" then took off, making a mental note of who's number she had to get a piece of next time.

We met some potentially interesting people and some great dogs. Our baby did just fine. This could be a great Saturday tradition and a fantastic way to get her properly socialized.