The Dog Park

"In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semihuman. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog." - Edward Hoagland

Radar at the dog park playing with a German Sheppard, a 5-month-old American Bulldog and a Jack Russel/Pit Bull mix.

This was my first experience at a dog park and you know what, dogs don’t play "nice"; they’re animals. They jump on each other (or in Radar’s case OVER each other), they bite, growl, paw and wrestle—behaviors that you try to train out of your children and suppress in a dog in your home, are all acceptable by dogs playing in a pack. I eventually stopped apologizing for Radar's roughhousing (he's not aggressive, he just plays BIG) and enjoyed watching him be a dog first, pet a distant second. Dogs are instant buddies and eager to greet each new arrival, they make no judgments based on external criteria, and (luckily for Radar) they keep no record of wrongs! They are free to be right here, right now, loving life. Amazing. You haven't lived until you've stood in the middle of a pack of dogs!