Back To High School

Dear Dog Lady,

I’m trying not to take it personally, but my feelings are hurt. This morning when I showed up at the park where neighborhood dogs and their owners gather every day, only one woman was there with her dog, Daisy, a Maltese. The dog ran over to my dog, greeting us warmly. Daisy’s owner was not so sunny. She responded to my bright “good morning” with a question: “Where is everybody?” She made me feel invisible. I felt like saying to her, “What am I? Chopped liver?”

Suddenly, my dog group feels like high school with its own social order and outcasts. Am I not in the popular crowd?

Miranda, Minneapolis

Miranda, ‘tis a mirage. You’re not a pariah just because somebody asked you, “Where is everybody?” An innocent question, really. Her dog, while more socially graceful, was probably wondering the same thing.

In the mornings, out on the dog field, people wander in with sleep in their eyes. They shouldn’t be expected to shine with good etiquette as long as their dogs behave.

Dog groups revolve around the dogs and, often, the human relations are dictated by the canine cliques. For example, if two dogs enjoy chasing each other, their humans will also gravitate to one another. That woman probably wondered where “everybody” was because the dogs her dog likes to play with weren’t in attendance.

In dog parks, the dogs form their own high school and humans are the supervising homeroom teachers. But you won’t find a popular vs. unpopular canine dynamic. Among the dogs, there are the rompers, the sniffers, the sitters, the treat beggars, the loners, the jump-uppers, the dirt diggers, and the ball chasers. I guess you could loosely translate these into high school terms -- such as jocks, brains, nerds, freaks, etc. However, for dogs, there’s no social stigma attached to being “in” or “out” of any of these groups.

The dogs don’t worry about being accepted. They are what they are. You should follow the carefree example.

Posted by Dog Lady at April 22, 2003 01:35 PM