{"id":32,"date":"2010-09-15T10:17:07","date_gmt":"2010-09-15T16:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikeycunningham.com\/blog\/?p=32"},"modified":"2010-09-15T10:17:07","modified_gmt":"2010-09-15T16:17:07","slug":"meddlin-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mikeycunningham.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/meddlin-dog\/","title":{"rendered":"Meddlin’ dog!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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"I'd throw a flag if I had opposable thumbs!"<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My wife and I have three dogs. The smallest is a little rat terrier named Terry. Next is Lobo, an adorably cute black Lab mix. Whatever his Labrador-ness is mixed with must be small – he’s full grown, but looks like a three-month-old lab puppy.<\/p>\n

And the big guy is Pirate. His mom was a blue heeler. We don’t know what his dad was, but I’m guessing something in the Australian shepherd or cattle dog group. He’s beautiful and brilliant and has an over-developed sense of entitlement.<\/p>\n

Now that we’re in CO Springs, we’ve become regulars at a local dog park. It’s very nice – part of Palmer Park, one of the big areas that I believe is taken care of by the Parks & Rec folks. We go just about every afternoon – sometime between 3:30 and 5:30 – and we stay for an hour or more and let the dogs stretch their legs, socialize, and have some fun.<\/p>\n

It’s fun for us, too. We’ve met quite a few folks since we’ve been going. Actually, we haven’t really met the people – we’ve met the dogs. “Oh, there’s Winston’s dad!” or “Hey! Sadie’s mom – how are ya?”<\/p>\n

The dogs are the main raison d’etre for the park, and I’ve enjoyed watching the way their society works. As the weeks pass, I realize that their sociology is about like human sociology – with more butt-sniffing.<\/p>\n

One aspect that I’ve found intriguing involves our big guy, Pirate. He’s close to 60 pounds, so he’s a good-sized dog, but he’s nowhere near the biggest that frequents the park. Still, for whatever reason, a rogue element of the herding instinct that’s buried in his genetic code has decided to manifest itself in his personality. Pirate has decided that he’s the referee.<\/p>\n

When new arrivals to the park show up, Pirate stops whatever he’s doing to go welcome them through the gate. If any dogs get a little too rambunctious with their barking or bullying, Pirate runs right up to them and tells them to cut it out. He’s become my little Republican – anytime he sees a couple of dogs having fun, he has to get in the middle of it and stop it. It hasn’t gotten out of hand – he responds fairly quickly to us when we tell him to mind his own business – but I find it completely fascinating.<\/p>\n

I wonder what causes that behavior…<\/p>\n

Does Pirate believe that pack values will fade away if dogs are allowed to sniff the behinds of whoever they want? Does he think that too much stick-chasing will corrupt the puppy generation? Did some puppy pundit from Fox Terrier News warn him about the terrifying dangers of socialized water bowls?<\/p>\n

Who knows… I have a lot of theories about the need to ensure that everyone around us believes what we want them to and does what we want them to, but they’re just theories – and maybe the reasons differ between people and puppies…<\/p>\n

Whatever the reason, I’ll keep watching Pirate meddle in the affairs of the canine community, and I’ll keep being amused.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My wife and I have three dogs. The smallest is a little rat terrier named Terry. Next is Lobo, an adorably cute black Lab mix. Whatever his Labrador-ness is mixed with must be small – he’s full grown, but looks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12,18,20,19],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mikeypedia","tag-conservative","tag-dog","tag-meddling","tag-park"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikeycunningham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikeycunningham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikeycunningham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikeycunningham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikeycunningham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikeycunningham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikeycunningham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions\/36"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikeycunningham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikeycunningham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikeycunningham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}