Properly Attired at the Dog Park

My mud boots are heavy, but they make me feel strong, like a woman who could run a farm on her own. I feel like I could muck a horse’s stall and feed the chickens and tromp into a pasture to rescue a calf that had wandered off. And then have coffee while sitting on an upturned milk crate.

Attire is so important. So defining.

It makes me happy that I store my mud boots in the back of the truck, that I have to take my regular boots off and put on my mud boots when I get to the dog park. That, when I wear my mud boots, I don’t care about stepping carefully. I just walk like I am the queen of the dog park, like the dog park was created just for me and my dogs and the cardinal that flits from tree to tree just outside the fence.

The man who is always there, the one with the short jacket and green watchman’s cap, stands at the “commons” where folks stand or sit and chat and watch their dogs running around in a circle. Five women sit on the benches near all the water jugs. They take one walk around the park with their leader, a woman walking with two big sticks. Her dogs are big with blond curly hair.

We mind our own business. Me and my boots and my two dogs. We are glorious and singular in our walk, the things we see and the mud we push through. We’re not afraid of any dogs or any weather. We are prepared. The mud boots have made it so.