We’re expecting a few packages today, but the weather is really nice– sunny and kind of warm– so I decided to walk the dogs a little earlier than usual. Actually, this is more like a return to an old habit. When we lived near Stuttgart, I used to walk them in the mornings as a matter of course, but lately I’ve been walking them later in the day.
Arran has me a little worried. His poop is looking kind of abnormal. Parts of it look normal and parts are dark brown/black and greenish. I know he’s been having some digestion issues lately. We took him to the vet last month and had him checked for worms, which they didn’t find. But although he’s pretty perky and playful, he’s not his usual self. He’s also gained some weight lately, which may be causing acid reflux (maybe he also has another mast cell tumor, although I haven’t seen it).
In any case, on our walk, we had to wait for the trash truck, which was maneuvering out of our narrow, crowded street and down the one way road out of the neighborhood. Then we made our way through the main drag, which is narrow and crowded with cars parked on the street. The sidewalks are also crowded with trash bins. I was about to breathe a sigh of relief as we were turning down a pedestrian area where people keep their gardens. I noticed Arran was about to poop and I wanted to have a look at it before I threw it away.
I noticed a guy with an athletic looking female dog approaching as I bent down to pick up Arran’s poop. I had managed to scoop up the shit, noticing that it looked somewhat more normal, although I think I saw some remnants of a toy in the last turd. My dogs were both on leashes, although Arran’s is a Flexi-lead tape leash. He probably doesn’t need it anymore, since he doesn’t run as much as he used to.
Guy with athletic female dog did not have her leashed. She started barking at Arran as I was finishing cleaning up the poop. She also lunged at him, which caused him to lunge back. German guy grabbed his dog, but still didn’t have her secure. So I was trying not to get shit on my hands while handling two dogs who were leashed. Meanwhile, his unleashed bitch was harassing Arran.
I probably gave him a super annoyed look. I didn’t say anything, since my German sucks… but I’m sure all he needed to know was written all over my face. Then I noticed another person with an unleashed dog, but he stayed out of the altercation and was obviously better trained. His owner managed to get him in her house before he got into any trouble.
Seriously, though… why not put your dog on a leash? Especially when you see someone is trying to be responsible and clean up dog shit, plus they have two dogs they’re juggling? Fortunately, this time, no one got hurt. This is not the first time someone’s out of control dog has intruded on my dog’s space. One time, it happened when a dog was able to climb out of his fenced yard. We were living at Fort Belvoir, an Army installation, at the time. He attacked my beagle, Flea, who was feisty but only weighed about 25 pounds to the other dog’s much larger stature. We ended up with a $200 vet bill, thanks to that incident.
My dogs are ALWAYS on leashes. Until we got Noyzi, our dogs have always been beagles, and we can’t let them go off leash because their noses can get them into trouble in a hurry. Aside from that, I don’t fancy having one of them get a bee in his bonnet and wind up on the Autobahn, which is very close to our house. We already lost one dog to that deadly highway last year.
The guy hurried ahead on the trail. I noticed his dog was staying by his side… until she wandered out into the field and took a big crap. Naturally, he didn’t bother to clean it up. That doesn’t really surprise me at all. Asshole.
My mom was caught in the crossfire of violence at her local dog park yesterday. One owner though a husky was being too aggressive. Instead of politely inquiring as to the owner and then nicely expressing her concerns to the owner, she loudly yelled that she was going to fuck up the dog’s ass if it messed with her boxer mixes. About ten minutes later, she struck up a conversation with my mom. My mom said she thought maybe she could keep the woman calm by conversing with her, but she had no such luck.
The husky bit at the woman’s dog, so the woman picked up someone’s plastic stick that is used to help people with lame throwing arms (such as myself) throw balls far enough to entice dogs to chase the balls and began hitting the husky with the plastic stick. All this did was make the husky more angry at the other dogs. He was even going after Cardinal Gibbons, my parents’ little whippet mix. Then the man and woman who owned the husky sauntered over. (My mom says she doughts they would move faster than a saunter if they were trapped in a burning building.) was The man started shouting at her, then turned to his significant other and said, ‘Do what you gotta do, Mama.” My mom was trying to remove her own dog from the fray (they were all ignoring the dogs by this point) and was directly in the female husky owner’s path to the other woman. She tripped over my mom and landed on her. My mom is very petite, and the woman was not small. She hurt my mom’s back, but my mom wants no part of tracking any of them down and suing them. She’s looking for a new dog park.
OMG… I’m sure that wasn’t funny for your mom, but the visual is making me hysterical! You definitely have Irish ancestry with those storytelling skills.