“What do you expect, him he’s a barn sour loving man.  You are never going get a fair shake from him.”

“Shirley let’s give the fella a break. He…”

“A break?  All I said, all I did was ask him if he got vaccinated yet.  And he starts screaming at me, screaming.  It took me by surprise and I was not about to take that.  Him screaming at me like a banshee.  I started crying, like a little girl, I was so upset.  I had to leave the dog park, because of him.  Jessie, she wasn’t too happy with that.  I had to give her morning treats, two that morning to calm her down.  Two, then she finally calmed down.”

This was all water under the bridge, a month earlier. 

This morning I go with her, Shirley, to the dog park.  Gayle, my wife, her daughter, and I are visiting from New York.  We want to see what Shirley is doing the whole day, hopefully, not rocking in a chair, waiting for the day she gets forced into assisted living.  When we visit, I go with Shirley every morning, to her dog park.  This is at 6 in the morning.  “I like to go before the sun gets too hot.”  Gayle, she usually sleeps in.  She is with us today.

The parks are so much nicer here than on the East Coast.  They are maintained by the Colorado lotto. It is for that reason I buy lotto when I visit my mother-in-law.  The dog parks ion Colorado, they are well maintained.  I buy tickets now.  I never win, like I do in New York, a dollar here, two dollars there.

Shirley’s posse at the dog park is the same every day. 

Ally is a spirited ex California gal with a white Doberman named Bodie.  Not to be confused with the two other dogs, Brody 1 and Brody 2.  Ally is very friendly, artsy, that LA type.  Nice gal but she talks too much, Shirley says.   I don’t think so.  I enjoy her.  I suspect she does edibles, and they kick in as she arrives at the dog park.  I believe that’s why she is so gabby.  Colorado gummy bears do that.  The owners of Brody 1 and 2, they are not gummy bear fans.  They are grumpy like their doggies.

Diane is, what does she do?  Hard to explain, something that makes satellite info come together, something that makes GPS work.  She engages my wife.  I overhear how “she” went off into the dessert to die.  No one could find her.  A friend took out his truck to search, success after two days.  It was taken a while to recover from that loss.  I thought they were talking about a woman, a lover, lost in the woods.  I was wrong, she was not grieving a gal pay.   She is talking about her deceased gal dog, Lizzie.  Her doggie at the park is Nico.  Nico is old, in the way.  She circles the perimeter of the park at her own slow pace, limping from the arthritis in her back legs.  When they other dogs play rough, she gingerly moves away.

Chuck used to be a PAC man in DC, PAC as in political action committee.  He is retired now with wife Barbara and Max the labradoodle.  His last name is Ford and I ask if he is related to Pres. Gerald who was not from Colorado but whose family skied a lot near Vail in his retirement years.  “Even if I was,” Chuck says, “I wouldn’t say that here.  We don’t talk politics here.  To keep the peace.  We whisper in hushed tones about political action committees and about his son who he very proud of, who has followed in his footsteps in DC.

Loren has two cutie dogs, mutts called Mutt and Jeff.  They are playful with everyone.  He is also retired, goes around the country lecturing at reenactment battles.  This weekend he is going to Pennsylvania to lecture about a battle during The Revolutionary War that the Polish won.  We have just returned from a trip to Europe and Israel.  I don’t mention Polish armies although I am curious.  Putin has just invaded The Ukraine which borders on Poland.  I am curious that Poland was a power two hundred years ago that fielded an army in the New World.

Loren says he is Jewish, his wife is Dutch and agnostic.  He gives me the lowdown on his trip to Egypt.  “Egypt is stinky, full of dirty Muslims.  Cairo stinks.  I hate them.  Even if you go up the Nile to Luxor, where the pyramids are.  It is full of them. Stinky, smelly Muslims.

I ask Shirley, is this the guy who made you cry.  “No.” is her response later. “That guy was Dennis.  There are a lot of Dennises around here.”

Jessie, she still remembers the day Dennis made Shirley cry.  She never understood that.  Why didn’t her mommy just yell back at that guy?  When her mommy doesn’t eat her breakfast in time in the morning, she is a regular scream machine, yelling at everyone.  Jessie tells Bodie, “When she yells in the morning, she says it is because of low blood sugar.  Something about that low sugar, makes her a whole other person.   Bodie suggests, “Maybe she should come here without eating, and let Dennis try to make her cry then.”

Bodie adds, “She should just follow what we all do.  We snarl, bare our teeth, fight with each other, not to hurt anyone, mind you.  This place is where we get the lead out, air our differences.  We circle.    We disagree.  We pounce on each other, get it off our chests and everything better for it.”   Bodie grooms himself, licks his private parts.  “I don’t get the point of not saying or doing anything.”

Jessie pants in agreement. “I know, this quiet stuff, what is up with that?   Crazies get to take over if no one speaks up and calls them out, crazies.  Crazies get nowhere if you argue and fight back.”

.Sitting at a table under some shade is Mike, Garcia is his last name.  I kid him, is he related to Jerry?  “No, his parents were from Galicia in Spain.”

Mike goes off on a tangent as he so often does, Shirley tells me.   Galicia in Spain makes the best pulpo, grilled octopus.   “That’s why Jerry played so well.  Even though he was missing a finger. His people were from a part of Spain famous for their tentacles, all eight of them.” 

Mike, he is not from Galicia.  “My ancestors go back thousands of years before all you folks got here.  My roots are by way the Mexicans who made it up here way before this was the place to be.”  His doggie, Cisco is a small white chihuahua.  Chihuahua is a province in Mexico.  The word means “place where the waters of the rivers meet.”

Cisco is a quiet chihuahua except when in the presence of other dogs.  No matter how big the dog, 10x his size, Cisco will bark and bark to say who is the boss.

Mike also has an older dog, Dozer, much bigger than Cisco.   Cisco will defend his brother against any other dog at the park, no matter how big. 

Mike has been gone for a while.  Doing some job in CA.   They make money, good money Mike tells us, collecting signatures for proposals on different ballots.  Mike used to do construction before retirement.  Was in the Navy before that.  He is a disabled vet.  “My disability is pretty big.  That’s why I can afford to help my son and my wife’s cousins.  They all live with us at our house.  Along with Cisco and Dozer.”

Cisco has heard about Dennis making Shirley cry.  He tells Jessie, “Why doesn’t she do what us dogs do? We get some agitators come to the park, try to be the new leaders, and change things up.   We just bare our teeth and growl and fight back.  Defend our turf.”

Peg had one dog and 2 cats.  Her friend Amy died recently, so she decided to adopt Amy’s three dogs.  So now she has 4 dogs and 2 cats.  There is Scratchy, an almost hairless white mix breed dog, whatever hair she has left is short stringy.  Another dog is Riley, a black French Poodle, boisterous, always jumping up on you.  Guess Amy used to let her do that all the time.  Peg used to work at the Pet Smart.  She trained dogs. If you bend down to pet Riley, she tells you, “You must pick him up, go ahead pick him up.  Riley, stop jumping! Show him you are not faking, pick him up!”  She talks a lot about is training dogs.

Kia is from Hawaii.  She is big like a native Hawaiian.  Her dog is tweeny weeny Lola, whose hair on top of her head is died purple this week.  She ties it up with little bow.  Ask her the dog’s breed and she shrugs.  Don’t know.  We talk about the mix that is Hawaiian.  I brag about how people say Hawaii’s second language is Ilokano, a dialect of the Philippines.  I am Filipino.  Like a good Hawaiian, she is defensive, says Hawaii natives are Hawaiian. And that is their language.

Kia is new to the park.  She has heard that you must steer away from politics.  Even though Uvalde is fresh, she talks about the windward side of Oahu, where they shot Jurassic Park.  I tell her I tried going there, at the height of covid, thought it would be easy, no way, a three-day waiting list.

Holly is a runner.  She has that funny accent, and that lean body a runner has.  Jada is her German Short Haired Pincher.  Everyday she seems to be ready to sprint in a marathon.  The two run to the park every morning.  Holly is growing stuff in her garden.  Spinach and kale she offers us.  Declining I tell her we will take her up next trip.  Jada and Max, the snickerdoodle, they pounce and snarl and wrestle each other.  It’s all horseplay, getting their energy out.  They are the best of friends.  Max sits complacent with Chuck until Jada arrives.  And then they are off.

There is newcomer, an Asian lady with her St Bernard.  She tends to keep to herself.   I thought she might be really new, to the country, and maybe she doesn’t speak English so well.  But no, when she showed up the day after a big storm, she parks near the pool, away from the dog park, and speaks like all those Asian exchange students in Cambridge, a flawless American accent.

Al, he is famous for walking his two dogs several laps around the park, every morning.  Everyone knows he does exactly 14 laps.  His two dogs, Australian Sheppard they walk with him, although one of them has dropped away lately and joined the other dogs as they follow Jada and Max’s suit.  Those two, they will jump at each other, growling the whole time, playful but just constantly at each other until energy has run out.

Odin is big Newfoundland dog.  He loves the soccer ball, a solid ball that never deflates, even though it is chewed up.  Odin plays soccer pretty good.  I imagine an Argentinian dog announcer saying “Gooooooooaaal.”   He is this big dog who barks and plays soccer with a heavy ball, slobbering all over.  He kicks the ball all over the park, alone.  Everyone is bemused at his solitary game.  His owner sits at a table, texting on his phone.

Dennis, he is the guy who made Shirley cry.  I meet him and his dog Brody 1.  I ask Shirley if he ever apologized.  Ma says” No, he has never mentioned it.  I am pretty sure the gang chastised him, but not enough for him to say he was sorry.”  Dennis puts his head down, when I meet him, doesn’t say much to  us, hardly a peep from him

Jada has joined the Jessie/Cisco conversation.  “Remember that couple from Florida, with the two Pit bulls?”  Cisco recalls.  “Those silly dogs, they tried to tell us, it was not cool that male and male dogs smell each other butts.  They tried to say the Holocaust never happened.  Even though they were from Florida, where you meet lots of folks with tattooed numbers on their arms.   Max and Dozer and the other locals, we showed them.  Some serious snarling and fighting but we showed them.  Brody and one of Florida Pit Bulls, almost toppled Shirley with their fighting.   Ally showed them.  She wailed, smacked the dogs away from Shirley.  I think Shirley learned her lesson.  That’s why her and Dennis are friends now.  Shirley is ready with her best low sugar monster voice ready for the next time they showdown.”

Cisco yelps, “It is not a matter of being genteel or nice.  Take it from us, do the doggie thing.  Sic’em .  Problem solved.  Sic in Latin denotes someone has made a mistake.  Well, us dogs can fix that.”

I feel relieved after this visit to the dog park.  I make it a point to buy my lotto ticket at on the way back to Shirley’s house.  I never win, a dollar or two like I do in New York. But it is worth it.