A Year of Stories (Collection Three)

Puppies and Expectations

If I've learned anything about dog parks over the years, and I have, it's that they attract exactly two types of people: men and women who live their lives in yoga pants, and those in the business of gossip.

Sandy Shaw and to a lessor degree, her Golden Labrador Puck, fall into the latter category. When she spots me, she makes a beeline, barely avoiding a mid-step collision with an angular, raven haired woman with a Dalmatian, who belongs to the former.

"Morning Sandy!"

"Morning Roland, isn't it a little early for you to be out and about?"

"Just waiting on someone."

"Oh? It wouldn't happen to that cute girl I saw you with last time? You know the one with the Terrier, whose mother never taught her that ladies don't wear red bras with white blouses."

"No such luck Sandy, and anyway, you know my heart belongs to you."

"You are a sweet one Roland."

"I try."

"You're also a terrible liar."

"You wound me Miss Shaw!"

"If only it were that easy."

"Don't underestimate yourself, I certainly wouldn't want to go five rounds with you."

"Maybe if I were twenty years younger, and you were just a little less charming."

"Maybe."

"Well, I better be off, stay sweet Roland, and tell her 'hi' for me, OK?."

"For you, Miss Shaw, anything."

I've been coming to Shady Acres Municipal Dog Park for about three years now. Each time, I arrive between 10AM and 2PM, and I stay for just about an hour, never longer. If I'm very lucky, the package turns up and I get to go home early. So far, its been fifteen minutes without anything to report, luck does not seem to be on my side.

Instead Jerome Lacroix – the owner of an Alaskan Huskie he named Mjolnir, after a comic book super weapon rather than a Norse one – calls me over to the bench he's currently warming, next to an old man so lost in his paper, that if not for the Dalmatian yipping beside him, he might as well not be there.

"Roland, my man!"

"Hey Jerry, how's Milly doing?"

"I'm telling you, she hates when you call her that."

"Does she now? Is that what you and the dog talk about while you're cuddling up at night?"