The Happiest Day

The temperature outside yesterday was almost perfect. I’ve had cabin fever in a really horrible way and wanted to get outside. My original idea was to take Blue to the park and have him walk with me on the trail. You see, if we can wear him out with exercise it usually means a more peaceful evening for us. And since we were going to dinner at Houlihan’s in Fairway and then meeting a couple friends for drinks at re:Verse on the plaza, it was necessary to wear Blue out so he’d sleep while we were gone.

Against my better judgment, I decided to take Blue out to the dog park instead of just the regular ‘ol trail. I was a little leery about taking him there because he’s still, as you know, in that phase of being totally obno. So we arrive at the park, Blue can see the other dogs, and he’s just beside himself. I’m convinced that this is the single happiest moment of his young life. We enter the park and I still have him on his leash, because hey, I’m afraid at this point. We go through the gate and he just goes crazy. CRAZY! I asked the people around us, “So, do I just let him off or what.” They said, “YEAHHH, that’s what this place is for; let him go crazy.” So that’s what I did. And, furthermore, that’s what he did.

Watching Blue run around that park at 120 mph has to be one of the proudest/scariest moments of this past year for me. I thought to myself, “Oh lord what is going to happen to him? Is he even going to come back? Will he kill or be killed? Ugh…this sucks already!” But then I realized that every other dog there was just as excited as he was and that made it a bit easier for me to let go. After knocking two kids over and nearly removing two dogs’ faces by running past them so fast, I just gave in to the experience. What else could I do?

Now the good stuff happens. Blue, along with a beautiful Weimaraner, found the “secret” pond at the back of the huge acreage of the dog park. There just so happened to be another Golden there, along with several Yellow Labs. The game was on. Blue didn’t even have to think twice about getting in. And get in immediately is what he did. I should have known that was coming. One of the owners of a Lab had a Mountain Dew bottle filled halfway with water and was throwing it in the pond for his dog. Unfortunately there were about four dogs now that wanted to participate in the race for getting this bottle first. Let me say that, sadly, Blue was not the fastest swimmer there. He could still jump farther into the water than the others, but he just isn’t Mark Spitz when it comes to swimming. We’ll have to work on that at the lake this summer.

Finally after about an hour of (literally) non-stop spazzing, running, retrieving, and swimming, Blue decided to go be friendly with an older woman that was at the park. I’d been somewhat chasing him since we got there; mainly so I could keep my eye on him. I screamed to the woman, “CAN YOU PLEASE GRAB A HOLD OF THE GOLDEN?” She did and I was finally able to get him on the leash so we could go back home. My biggest mistake is now forthcoming. I put Blue in the back of my car wet and semi-muddy. I have a cloth interior. It’s not pretty. Luckily it didn’t smell this morning on the way to work. Ugh! What am I…stupid? Well, all-in-all, I guess you could say it was worth it. I’ll definitely have to plan better for next time, but Blue had the best day of his life thus far and that’s enough to make me feel good about what happened yesterday.