Scenes from a dog park - 6

Stella's standing in the middle of the empty baseball diamond, just standing there. She's been doing more of that these days. She could stand there for twenty or thirty minutes or maybe even longer if I don't go over and give her ass a shove. It's almost like she's in a trance or something. For all I know, she could be telepathically communicating with space aliens, telling them to hurry up and send the mothership to come pick her up and take her home.

Wouldn't I look the fool then, having doubted her.

The English Bull Terrier pup doesn't care about any of that. He charges at Stella. He lurves her. Well he lurves her when she's the only other dog in the park to lurve and right now, that would be the case.

The pup runs right into Stella's leg and bumps her back a bit but she tries to ignore him. She's still busy with the UFO. So, the pup jumps up at her face and knocks into her jaw with with football shaped head. This she doesn't like and she growls at him.

The pup takes this as an invitation and butts her again. And Stella growls again, this time louder and more insistent. The pup jumps up again and tries to nip her jowls and then drops low and nips her front ankle. Stella barks at it and backs up a step. The pup keeps nipping at ankles and batting at her face with his paws. Stella is getting really fierce now, growling, baring teeth, giving warning snaps. The pup rams its head into Stella's face again and quickly pulls back as she snaps at him. The pup runs around back and nips at her hind ankles and Stella spins around and snarls and snaps at the pup but they're still all warning snaps. Nothing makes contact. The pup continues its assault even as Stella gets angrier and angrier and starts to walk away from him. He stumbles after her, hoping for a chase and he gets it. She starts running from him, occasionally turning around and snarling and snapping the air in his general direction. She's running from him and he's really having fun - now that the chase is on.

It doesn't last. Stella stops and spins around and I think she's finally going to lay into him. She barks three short sharp barks and gives him her biggest snarl snap yet but he just spins around with joy and when she is through, he bounds into her and nips and paws her and head butts her. Stella gives up. She just stands there, suffering this greatest of all indignities and looks at me.

"Why the fuck are you putting me through this?" she says.

I look over at the owner of the pup and I say, "Well, I guess that didn't work out."

"No, I better go get him," he says. He runs over and spends a couple of minutes catching his pup and putting the leash on him and dragging him away from Stella.

"I don't know," he says. "I don't think Cato's ever going to learn his lesson unless some dog actually beats him up."

"Yeah, he's cute but not too smart," someone else offers.

I walk over to Stella who is cautiously optimistic that her ordeal is over. I pat her on the head and tell her what a good dog she is for putting up with all that puppy madness and she just looks at me and then returns to her spot in the middle of the baseball diamond.