Wishes

The German Shepherd jumped on us, first my husband and then me. He was a nice looking dog, a good runner, and young looking, still sleek.None of that customary Shepherd thickening had started yet. He was alert and ready. Exuberant. A happy dog full of himself and the day in front of him.

My husband pets dogs when they jump on him. I turn away like they tell you to do in dog obedience school. Heaven forbid, I should reinforce some stranger dog’s jumping habit by petting him. That matters not to my old man.

“All dogs like me,” he says every time a new dog runs up to him at the dog park.

“Yes, so you’ve said.” On just this morning’s outing, he pet the shepherd, a portly Golden Retriever, and a couple of big mutts. This is a big wide open dog park so we don’t encounter a lot of tea-cup dogs or, heaven forbid, dogs on leashes. Howard pets every dog who asks. Not me. I walk with my hands in my pockets. Plus I only like my own dogs. It’s a huge cultural divide between us.

The man who owned the jumping Shepherd yelled at him but not seriously. He carried a gallon of water around the half-mile path. At the top of the hill where planes landing at the local airport fly so low you want to reach up and touch their bellies, the man beckoned the Shepherd on to a picnic table and poured him fresh water in a metal bowl.

Then, we started down the hill. The dog jumped again. His owner half-heartedly yelled at him, but Howard rewarded his jumping with more petting. “Nice dog,” Howard said, believing in his true heart that all dogs are nice. The man answered something longer but I heard only this, “I like dogs better than most people.”

He says this in a friendly way, still walking swiftly down the path, his dog racing from one side of the trail to the other. Then, he passes me on the path and says, for my benefit and the world’s, as if the world didn’t already know, “If it was up to me, I’d have ten dogs.”

It seemed quite a joyful thing to say. Exuberant. Happy. It almost made me consider petting his dog but I kept my hands in my pockets and kept walking. Still, I kind of agreed with him.Maybe not ten dogs but three or four.