Crazy Dog Lady - March 23, 2011

Hurrying down the steps and out my front gate on my way to work, I stopped twenty yards or so from my front door to let my dog relieve himself in the same empty patch of dirt that he uses daily.  In my very urban neighborhood of busy streets it is very difficult to find a good spot for my guidedog to go, so we’re fortunate for this one vacant tree planter (though it often seems to get mistaken for a trashcan.)  Today, however, there is a van of two or three hysterically barking dogs parked beside his precious spot.  I wonder if he will still go with them barking their heads off right next to him, or if I’m going to have to find another location (which will most likely make me even later for work).  Fortunately, he goes though, and just before he is finished I hear a woman’s voice from around the front of the van.  “Um, do you think you could stand somewhere else with your dog because he’s making my dogs crazy.”  Uh, what the hell…This caught me so off guard I didn’t know what to say in the moment.  It was obvious that she neither knew he was a guidedog, nor got that he was peeing.  So I replied, “Uh, sure.  He’s a guidedog, and as soon as he’s done peeing we’ll be moving on.”  I don’t know how much of the situation actually sank in though, because as I put my dog’s harness on to walk away, she said to me in a somewhat less bitchy tone, “Well, I wouldn’t normally mind, it’s just that my dogs like their privacy.”  What???  I had no response for this, so I proceeded to walk away in disbelief, hoping that eventually the entirety of what just happened might dawn on her.  Moments later though, as I moved off down the street, all kinds of responses bubbled up in my head, including: “If your dogs need their privacy, than why don’t you keep them at home where they can have it!” “This is where my GUIDEDOG goes to the bathroom every day, so if your dogs are having a problem with it, you are more than welcome to move your van.“ and “If your dogs were trained and/or socialized, than they wouldn’t have such a need for what you call privacy, and others might refer to as instinctual behavior!”

Oh well, I hadn’t thought of any of this in time, so I didn’t get to say any of it to her.  I just get a good story out of it, and hope that the next time an equally ridiculous incident occurs I will be more prepared to respond.  Oh, and I’m sure I’ll get the chance to test my skills soon, because things like this happen on a daily basis for me; though fortunately most aren’t so extreme.