My Dog Years: For Every Year I Walk Dogs, I Age 7

Puppets

There were two shifts at the dog park on weekdays before noon. The first was an early rising crowd of professionals and retired baby boomers in fleece pullovers, cargo pants and water resistant hiking shoes. They greeted one another with quiet smiles, friendly nods of the head and kept their conversations to a low hum. They shared highlights from recent east coast college tours, rare political opinions and jokes about how their dogs, unlike their teenage children were always happy to see them and never asked for money. Occasional bursts of laughter pierced the misty stillness as they watched their purebred retrievers, shepherds, poodles and wiry hunting dogs writhe, wrestle and run across the five acres of uninterrupted green grass.

The open land was irresistible to neighborhood dog owners who occupied the park outside the organized AYSO, recreational baseball and high school La Crosse team practice. On days when the City Parks Rangers had complied enough complaints and had little else on their agendas, they drove their porcelain white SUVs past the steel and aluminum bleachers onto the pitch to issue citations.

The word around the dog park was that the rangers were LAPD cadets who had on more than one occasion failed to pass the written test and had accepted their fate policing the city's many parks, trails and scenic overlooks. Exercising authority over the well-heeled west side residents who were major donors to campaigns for local and state politicians proved difficult for the rangers. Even Robert, the park's resident homeless who lived in the northwest corner behind a tree, condescended to the officers whenever they tried to address him. Though he slept just beyond the brush at the edge of the grass under a weathered and wrinkled blue tarp with trash strewn all around him, Robert was a Ph. D who had taught at Queens College in the 1960s. He smelled sharply, had dirt ground into his skin and fingernails but his diction was impeccable and he still had strong opinions about film, music and literature.

The second shift clocked in when most people were sitting down at their desks. They were more of a clique than a crowd. They were a Starbucks toting posse in Seven for All Mankind jeans. Unlike their designer sunglasses, their beloved dogs were brindle colored mixes and mutts who had limps, scars and quirks that told of their journeys from trash cans, desert highways and county animal shelters. Their husbands were CEOs, COOs and CFOs of movie studios, cable news networks and Internet start up companies.

Life was turning out not to be linear for me so I liked the anonymity of the early morning group. I wasn't married, engaged or even dating anyone. Every day I woke up with anxiety about my finances and my future. A job as a film development executive for a Manhattan billionaire hedge fund manager with an interest in producing independent art-house films had been a dead end instead of a ladder. It had concluded very strangely with me sobbing at a performance of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club where Alan Cumming kept making eye contact with me as he danced with a gorilla. A job as City Editor for a webzine which had floated toward me like a paddle in a sea of uncertainty, had fallen victim to the "slash and burn through capital" mentality of the new start up economy.

There was no blueprint for becoming a writer. My days were filled with faxing unsolicited resumes to production companies for freelance work on television commercials and emailing unsolicited query letters to magazine and newspaper editors. For weeks, I had been pitching a nostalgia piece on The Brown Derby restaurant and researching a story on location extras. In between, I chipped away at copy writing assignments sent my way by friends who managed accounts at publicity firms and web development companies.

Despite the instability, this was the happiest I had been in years. Lucas was a wiry, scrappy, raccoon-eyed bundle of love. As soon as we arrived at the park, his playful, exuberant energy dissipated my woes. He crawled all over Samson the Great Dane and hunted for gophers with Blue the Bloodhound. According to Scott, the dogwalker, Lucas had given a second life to Sasha the black Standard Poodle who until then had only been known for nipping other dogs and the occasional jogger who saw it fit to run through the dog park. For at least one hour every morning, I lived in the present. I didn't futurize, catastrophize or wallow in regret.