Shows to Go you

So last week, I was all queued up to write a lengthy post about Dog Park rules and suggestions - pointers and advice. I felt fairly confident that I could write about it with expertise and well-informed knowledge. After all, we got Dexter in March and he's turned out pretty well so far. Despite the deluge of poops in the kitchen that first day, he's perfectly housebroken now. He doesn't bother the cats. He loves the foster kittens. Mostly he just sleeps underneath the coffee table on the floor and the most bothersome thing about it is when he decides my foot makes a good pillow while I'm simultaneously trying to use it with my sewing machine peddle. And he does great at the dog park - he's a fairly gentle player, he loves to be chased, and he particularly enjoys puppies, german shepherds and dobermans.

And then on Saturday we took him to the dog park, like we've been doing literally every day for the last 3 or 4 weeks, and all hell broke loose.

A week or two ago, Dexter finally figured out what fetch is. He FINALLY became interested in actually RETRIEVING the thrown ball. He likes to do it solo, does not enjoy competition, and does not bring it directly back. He'll carry it back and lay down 3 or 4 feet away from us, chewing on the prize. This is an acceptable distance to me, so we'd go over and take the ball - easily - from him and throw it again.

Then, about a week ago, he started to growl at other dogs in his vicinity if he had the ball in his mouth and was trying to chew on it and they had the temerity to come near him.

Our solution was to take the ball away from him, and either place it on a picnic table, out of reach, or throw it over the fence to the 20 lbs or less dog park area.

I admit, it was totally our fault that we just sidled around this behavior. Cesar would be very disappointed.

On Saturday there were like a MILLION tennis balls. Some of them squeaked, which escalates his behavior. We took ball after ball after ball away from him. We got him to run around with other dogs a few times and then after we'd been there for like 45 minutes, we gave in and started throwing a ball for him to fetch. And then he brought it back, laid down, a pit bull came over to sniff him and he FREAKED OUT.

There was growling and biting and loud snarling and lunging and attacking and ugliness and I'm surprised I didn't start crying right then and there.

We like this dog park for many reasons, but one of them is that all the dog owners are vigilant and everyone swooped down and called out their own dog - and the pit bull owner got a hold of his, the poor thing. And we got a hold of our demon, and Greg TOOK HIS SWEET TIME putting dexter's leash on.

Now, Greg's a slow mover - seriously, he'll admit that. But this felt like FOREVER. Probably because I wanted nothing but to sink into the ground and disappear.

We left. I didn't know what else to do.

I wanted so badly to speak to the pitbull owner and tell him we KNEW it wasn't his dog's fault, it was ours, and pitbulls can be awesome dogs. However, I couldn't locate my vocal cords. I think they fell out after I was through hissing at greg to GET DEXTER'S LEASH ON NOW!

On our walk out, ANOTHER dog scuffle broke out over a ball - which was oddly reassuring at the time - but boy was I in shock for hours.

Our adorable little Dexter is a jerk.

On Sunday I sucked it up, and we spent the day throwing, tossing, bouncing, catching, and rolling tennis balls around and every time Dexter even thought about the ball we shook a tupperware container of pistachios at it and he turned the other way.

Now, I know this might engender fear and I'm not entirely comfortable with that. The ideal would be that he's just NOT POSSESSIVE of any stupid balls around other dogs. Unfortunately, we only have the one dog, and he's not possessive of his toys around us.

So we faced our fear - a little - and took him to the dog park again on Sunday afternoon (Not at peak time), and he only picked up one ball and dropped it almost immediately after we shook those pistachios. There was a small scuffle but that was caused by a little jerk of a Jack Russel.

He did just fine on Sunday. The thing is, I'm still scared. I know I'm supposed to be calm and assertive, but I'm all anxiety about taking him back there when all the other dogs we know are there. We would never ask for balls to be banned - that would be dumb. And we can't ask that people not throw balls around. How do we address this issue?