Wednesday, April 16, 2008
It’s Funny Now - Benny & the Greyhound
When the boys were about 6 months old we thought it would be a good idea to start taking them to the dog park to help socialize them. The closest dog park to us at the time was very nice, but it did not have a separate area for small and large dogs. This made me a tad nervous, but I thought it would be good for the boys to learn to play with big dogs as well.
After a couple trips at times which we thought would be off peak, we soon learned that the park was always fairly busy. We soon settled into the routine of going in the evenings a couple times a week. The boys quickly became known at the park and they did a great job playing with both big and small dogs.
We got to the park one evening as usual and the park was particularly crowded. The boys went into the fenced area and immediately started playing. The dogs were running and the boys were doing their best to keep up, when out of the blue, a greyhound sprints up to baby Benny and picks him up by the scruff of his neck and trots off of him.
I saw the whole thing and I frantically started to look for the greyhound’s owner. Luckily, the owner was on top of things and was already on her way to tell her dog to put down baby Benny, which the greyhound begrudgingly did. The owner pulled a muzzle out of her pocket and quickly put it on her dog. At that point she proceeded to tell me that her dog most likely thought that Benny was a rabbit and she angrily stomped off because she didn’t want to have to muzzle her dog.
I was fine up until the point she got mad at us for her having to muzzle her dog. It wasn’t like we were in the large dog section of the park, the park was for all dogs of all sizes. And Benny never even went up to her dog, so it wasn’t like he was enticing the greyhound. The greyhound sought him out.
I’m just so glad that the greyhound didn’t start to shake Benny when he picked him up. Lucky for us, he just picked him up and started to walk away with him.
When this first happened, I was more than a little irked. But, now when I look back on it I can’t stop laughing. I can picture it plain as day, little baby Benny hanging by the scruff of his neck getting toted around by a greyhound. That will teach him to be so cute!
Danielle
04/16/2008
That is always one of the things that freaks me out about the dog park. Ours is the same way, no separate area for big and small dogs. Lola is very alpha…so how she plays with other dogs depends on how she is approached. One particularly busy day a pit mix decided it wanted to play with her by standing over her and rolling her to the ground. She wanted nothing of it and proceeded to grab the pit by the jowls and hang there. She was probably only 7 or 8 pounds at the time but I still freaked. I was waiting for the owner to come and holler at me about my “vicious” dog. Of course my other half wanted to scoop Lola up and protect her and I had to school him on how this would just make her think she could be an instigator and how I don’t want her to become one of those small dogs who causes trouble. Another time a playful lab tried to pick her up by the head.