Lilly and I ventured to a high-use public park in Denver over the weekend to visit some friends from out of town. Since I often lament Lilly’s reactions to various stimuli, I must say that she took the park and all its hubbub in stride. Imagine a dog who lives in a pretty quiet rural community going to the big city. If she were typing today, I suspect she’d have amusing thoughts on the things she saw. What might a smart, sensitive dog like Lilly believe when she sees a group of grown people bashing an alligator-shaped pinata with a stick?
It seems that in addition to our tiny rendevous … a group of Florida alumni living in Denver hosted some football booster picnic. I honestly don’t know which school — Florida or Florida State — have gators as a mascot, but whichever one isn’t, spawned the alumni group we saw.
Not more than 25 feet from where we enjoyed our visit, a whole crowd of them encircled the pinata. One by one, they took turns beating the poor thing with a stick. Surprisingly, Lilly didn’t completely freak out. Usually any sort of impact noise would scare her. Maybe their cheers gave her context for the noise. Perhaps despite the repetitive smacking, their relatively happy noises helped. (She sometimes like when people cheer for her, so maybe she thought all the noise was for her.)
At one point, about 150 guests from a wedding at the boat house traipsed past us on their way to the flower gardens. My guess is that the iternerary went party, wedding, party because not long after they parade by the first time, the made their way back to the boat house. Again, Lilly took the noise and movement in stride.
Then, however, the bagpipes began. In my many years as the wedding writer for The Denver Post (and occassionally for The New York Times), I’ve attended more nuptials that I like to admiit. Trust me, I’ve seen and heard the bagpipes more than enough for one lifetime.
Maybe it’s because of all the firefighters in my family, but I tend to hear bagpipes and think funeral … not wedding.
Either way, the pipes droned on and on and on.
While Lilly didn’t overtly react to the whine of the bagpipes. I suspect it wore on her.
Our day at the park included me asking Lilly to lay quiety in a down-stay right next to the picnic food. French fries to be exact. And, I’m pleased to report she did not steal (or try to steal) a single one in 90 minutes.
She happily accepted pets from Ellie and Meg (hey, girls!), who will soon enter fourth grade and kindergarten respectively.
She did not pop up when kids from other picnics raced by noisily.
She did not react when a loose poodle (small one) headed our way.
Only rollerbladers and a couple bikes whizzing by set her off. I was on the phone, giving directions, so all I could do was hold on. Reactivity to fast-moving things began when Lilly was tiny. It went away for quite some time. I thought we’d socialized and trained it away, but it’s recently resurfaced. Silly me!
Considering the bevy of stimuli, I’m fine with how things went. More than fine, really. She did a spectacular job thanks to her ball, a peanut-butter-stuffed Kong and a fair bit of trick work and obedience training.
So, I’ll say this … All hail Lilly, princess of the public park picnic.
0 comments