Normal things dogs do.

Look! It's the dog park.


We went to the one in the more fancy neighborhood. It's sort of like a nice hill surrounded by prison fencing. We're not used to fences.

There were your basic little yappy dogs, little pestery dogs, huge thug dogs, medium size fetching dogs, and a couple giant old dogs. The secret to bringing Otterpop to a mixed race dog park is give her the little Orange Ball and do not let her lose it. If she is holding on to the ball, the pestery dogs and the yappy dogs and the thugs will not make her INSANE by TOUCHING HER so she wants to bite them.

Small and pestery is her biggest peeve. Otterpop has to use enormous amounts of impulse control to keep her shit together at the dog park. And her Orange Ball.

Gustavo and Banksy kind of love the dog park. They both know how to negotiate the mosh pit of the thugs, prance around with the yappers, spaz out with the pesterers, fetch with the fetchers and be very sweet to the old dogs. They are actually good at how-to-do dog parks.


Otterpop mostly had to follow me around with me hissing at her, "Hold on to that Orange Ball…"

She's not so bad if she can just be near the fetching dogs and nobody wants to touch her. This is just going to be something Otterpop has to do while the coyotes and tweakers are occupying our normal walking zones.

Ruby can't go to the dogpark. I get too worried the thugs might run her down. She gets a chewy in the car.


It's not so bad at the dog park. It's big and hilly and I just marched around up and down the hills while everybody else chatted in their sandals and mindlessly chuck-itted their balls. Everyone there was nice and even the thug dogs were very nice thugs. I was the most not normal one there, clomping up and down the hills hissing about the Orange Ball half the time.

I waited til all the people left the chatty picnic table to put the dogs there. It's a very chatty dog park.


Banksy did another normal dog thing today. Went to a new vet who's office was not contaminated by Satan Horror Virus! She was kind of scared but normal dog scared and let the doctor stick the thing in her ear and stethoscope her and touch her teeth and her stomach and run the microchip scanner over her. I won't say Banksy loved it, but she wasn't all, WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!

She even ate the vet's treats. It was extremely no big deal. Total within the realm of your basic nervous dog at the vet. I am very excited about Banksy's new vet!

We had a nice day just doing normal things that normal dogs do.