Find the Anchors When the Going is Rough

Most people at the dog park stand around. And because they’ve nothing better to do, their dogs chase each other and play fight, which the people all enjoy. It’s what they like and why they came, to watch their dogs and talk to each other.

We walk past the people to the paths through the woods where our two dogs weave in and out of the trees, sniffing and studying what is new and wet from last night’s rain. They trot past the chasing and playing dogs when we come around the loop, stopping sometimes to be greeted but usually trotting on. We never stop, although we might say hello, because we are there to walk our dogs and to be walked, I guess.

Our dog, Swirl, stops at fallen trees to chew on branches. He does this like he is visiting a breakfast buffet at a Holiday Inn. Wood – on branches, fallen as twigs on the ground – is there for his feasting. We tell him “no” but it is hard to keep him from wood in a forest. So we tend to look the other way.

Our other dog, Punchy, swaggers down the trail like a drug dealing coyote until he finds a ball which he carries in his mouth like a small possum. He is happiest when he has found an old ball, the cover peeling off. If I call his name when he has a ball he will drop it like he’s done something illegal and needs to right away surrender. Today’s ball was so lovely in his mouth, so perfect in color, and his pride in his find so great that I had to take a picture. I tried several times but when I called him to look at me with his orange ball in his mouth, he dropped it and backed up.

Sometimes, well, not lately, but sometimes, we come around a corner on the trail and see a very old man in ragged pants and a threadbare jacket sitting on a bench resting his two hands on his cane. Next to him will be a very old, overweight, small white dog. And each time I see the pair, I marvel that they walked that far and didn’t just sit near the people gathered at the trailhead, all of them talking and watching their dogs play. I take from that they both want to be walkers and not watchers although neither seems to have the wind for going far.

I don’t know the man. I’ve talked to him only to say hello. In my hello, I wanted him to read my respect for him coming to the dog park with his cane and his very old dog and for being game for the walking, for taking his dog where he could sniff and study what is new and wet from last night’s rain if he were so inclined.

When we come around the loop the last time, we call our dogs to “wait.” Because they do this so readily, stop in their tracks and turn their backs to us, we believe “wait” is a command they learned when they were sled dogs. And so they stop what they are doing or sniffing and stand like they’re waiting for a harness or for us to pet them on their backsides, which they love because that’s how they grew up. And then we leash them up and we leave. When we get to the truck, they leap in, Swirl on the floor and Punchy on the seat, and we go home.

On the way home, we listen to the radio. The road we travel goes over a big bridge where we see ships that have left the harbor. And, in that moment, in the car with our dogs, the buildings of our city and the blue of Lake Michigan in front of us, everything seems very fine. We are anchored.