March 23, 2011

No Bash Brothers at the Dog Park Please!

The Bash Brothers were at the park yesterday. You may remember a cheesy Disney movie in the mid-late nineties- The Mighty Ducks! Well, I love/loved this cheesy Disney movie and currently have the trilogy in my DVD collection, but I was reminded of these movies yesterday while at a  dog park.
In the second and somewhat in the third movie of the Mighty Ducks franchise were characters called the Bash Brothers. In case you totally missed the Mighty Ducks movies, they were about a coach who had a grudge against hockey because of his NHL injury early in his short-lived career. He goes back to his home town and reluctantly teaches youngsters the game in the "Pee Wee" Hockey league. Well, a few Characters were the Bash Brothers. They two guys were big guys who were checkers- which as I understand it, are players who use muscle to push people around on the rink. They were the security. The thugs. The players who got cards and box time because of rough housing. Well, I met the dog equivalent of these characters yesterday (as I have already said like three times in this post).
I took a nice walk in the Old Mill with Pixar as I was in Bend and waiting for a meeting to begin. We started at Red Robin, headed north almost to the bridge at Colorado, then turned around, went back through the shopping at the Old Mill, crossed the walking bridge, and headed under the next street and stopped at the new Dog Park. After the dog park, we went to the next walking bridge at the Farewell Bend park, and then headed back to the car and got some lunch.
Anyway, as we were in the dog park, there were to large dogs that came up to Pixar and were barking and not letting him move at all in the park. He was a scared little guy. Finally, we got past these two dogs and got away from them so they would leave him alone. You may think that since Pixar was out of reach, they would stop. NO, not in the least. These two dogs found another dog to torment. We stayed for a bit, but wanted to get on with the rest of our walk and so we started to leave. As we were leaving, these same two large dogs were doing the same thing to another poor dog, not even as small or young as Pix. I felt bad for the other dog, just as I felt bad for Pixar.
If my dogs were acting like this, they would be leaving the dog park right away. What were the owners of these dogs thinking? They were so hands-off that it was intimidating the other dogs. They need to teach their dogs how to behave in a social setting like this. Now, I understand that it takes time and my dog does not do everything that he should in a social setting- he still jumps up on people even though we are working on it- but there is no reason to let you dogs run the park like that. No Bash Brothers at the Dog Park please.