A Walk in the Park

in which I get into my own dog fight

Our first day in the city upon return from New Hampshire is often tense. The senses quickly forget how to filter the onslaught. Confined spaces drive little boys into frenetic states, like a gas under compression. The best cure is always a walk in the park.

Yesterday was Monday, Day 1 back in Brooklyn, back to school for D-man and work for Daddy. Distractions from necessary tasks (eat, get dressed, make lunches) included: The Tooth Fairy's first delivery ($5) and Chess (a theoretical match between Duncan and Reeve in which Duncan makes the moves for both parties, magnanimously allowing Reeve to win every now and then to keep him interested). At last, Jordy and Duncan got out the door to the subway for school/work. Time to walk the dog.

Suiting up for a dog walk is not a simple process. First, one must configure the no-pull contraption on the dog, whose poor old hips are likely to splay out in the process. Then one must dress Reeve in parka and helmet for riding scooter. Then one must affix baby to back, which requires months of yoga training to perform back-bend on couch to secure straps before springing upright with confidence that baby will not fly off. Getting out the door is a Three Stooges routine, the stooges being Me (with Papoose), Reeve, and Wiley T. Dog, in which our efforts to circumambulate strollers in the front hall leads to entanglement by dog leash. We unwind ourselves, make it as far as the front porch and down to the sidewalk when I realize I've forgotten plastic bags. I coax the 3-year old back up to the porch while I race inside, get bags, then down and off we go.

The trash trucks have just passed, so the sidewalk is a slalom course of garbage can tops. Reeve weaves deftly among them on his scooter; I step on one and nearly go over, but regain my balance. We reach the end of the street, whereupon Reeve requests mittens. A Reeve request is not negotiable, and what kind of lousy mother makes her child go bare-knuckled when she herself has gloves, so back we go, in and around garbage tops, hook dog to the fence, back up the stairs, get the mittens, and back out for take 3.

Let it be said: Wiley T. loves trash. Its absence (as in rural New Hampshire) makes his heart grow only fonder. Despite a hearty breakfast at the house, this morning he lunges lustily at every possible scrap. If it's a napkin or paper towel, I let him have it. If it's foil, he will sometimes reject it. (The dog has standards.) This morning he rejects nothing. In broad view of Billy the Whippit-Sniffer and the merchants opening shops, I must wrestle a cigarette box out of his mouth, but his locked jaws require me to straddle his body. Tucker must find this amusing as he finds himself upside down on my back. Meanwhile, Reeve on his scooter whizzes up to Farrell's Bar where he will wait for me, though concerned passers-by don't share my confidence and yell both at him and me.

Somehow we survive the traffic circle, street cleaners and garbage trucks and all -- pteradactyls in Wiley's dog brain, requiring vicious defense. At last we enter the park and I take a deep breath. The sun streams through the bare limbs. The last of autumn's splendor has fallen during our absence, and we are returned to the capacious views all the way up the Great Meadow to the museum. Wiley hunkers down and drops a poop beside the magnolia tree, an odd poop no doubt from all the odd scraps we gave him over Thanksgiving. Nonetheless, our mission is now accomplished and the rest of this walk will be, simply, a walk in the park.

Baby, Wiley and I walk twenty paces when Reeve goes down. "Carry me." I look back at the boy sitting on his scooter. I tell him I can't possibly carry him, a logic that holds no interest for him. "I want a gwown-up to carry me!!" he demands. I offer to carry his scooter and let him walk. No go. I confess I resort to the, "Bye Bye!" trick of walking off. It works. He catches up with us on his scooter like a shot, and I'm relieved. We pause for one fatal moment to let Wiley roll around in the fallen ginko leaves (which I will pay for later in sour stench), and Reeve goes down again. "Carry me!" It turns out that analysis of regressive behaviors is of very little use for convincing a three-year old to walk or scoot home. I was stuck. Had to resort to the "Bye-bye" technique again, which feels exploitative at best, but it worked. We made it back out to the street where Reeve wanted to stop and "warm up" on a bench in the sun. Having no appointments to keep, I agreed.

Reeve produced a lizard from his pocket, green and rubbery. As the lizard crawled and flew among the slats of the bench, Wiley took an interest in something buried under the fallen leaves. I spaced out for a critical millisecond in which Wiley got the coveted item in his jaws. At first I could see only yellow cardboard. Let him have it, I thought. But then as he worked on it I heard a familiar jangle -- the sound screws make in a little plastic package from the hardware store. I have experience authorizing (and paying for) surgery to remove a lethal doorpost from an animal's intestine. My mind raced forward to the X-Ray of Wiley's gut, screw shrapnel every where. I could hear my dear husband, who tolerates all these animals I take in off the street, reasonably weighing the cost of Wiley's surgery, no doubt with slim chances of survival, against tuition and taxes. There was no time to waste.

Like John Wayne leaping on his steed to catch escaping Indians, I throw myself onto Wiley again. My urgency must have told him this was a treasure worth fighting for; he no doubt thought I wanted to eat it myself. He dug his heals in, writhing left and right to avoid my grasping arms. Baby must have felt like he was riding two bucking broncos. Reeve and his lizard ceased from their adventures to watch the epic battle. But I would not be defeated. Yank his mouth open, I did, and toss box of screws beyond the fence of the park. "Time to go home," I panted.

Weaving between parked cars to cross Prospect Park Southwest without a crosswalk, four mortals and a scooter made the passage without getting hit by a bus. Reeve declared he was miserably cold, though he resisted my logical encouragement to "walk faster" in order to get home "sooner." (Lizard was busy checking out each wrought-iron fence post along the way.) Ahead my Doggie-Radar honed in on a large one on approach with an owner on a cellphone. My cortisol spiked a bit -- inattentive owners may not notice how I hold my own dog on a short leash to the side as they pass. She might think nothing of letting her dog run out for a quick butt sniff greeting with Wiley, but Wiley T. can be unpredictable on a leash. As I huddled with Wiley to the side, gauging the in-coming canine's trustworthiness in relation to Reeve, now alone at a significant distance behind us, lo and behold, Wiley starts to take a second dump. I wait a beat to clean it up to let the dog pass to a safe distance. I begin untying a plastic bag from my retractable leash when-

"Don't let your dog poop on my yard!!!" At first I cannot identify the source of the shrill voice. I am totally confused. I look down at the non-descript 3 foot-by-3 foot patch of dirt permitted in this New York City sidewalk for a tree, where I have just removed all traces of canine feces. Is she speaking to someone else? Then I see her, an older lady on a ladder behind a thicket. She was cleaning her windows, or else on high -altitude border patrol. "You are disrespecting my property! You have to stop that dog, and I mean it! These dogs ruin my yard!"

My heart rate leaps to about 300 bpm. This lady picked a fight with the wrong little Mamma. I lunge right back at her. "I am cleaning up after my dog. That is the law. This is a public sidewalk, not a yard!"

"This is my yard, and you are disrespecting! You have to take that animal to the park!"

"We just returned from the park where he went poop!" (Am I really shouting these words to a perfect stranger?) "And while we're on the topic, you shouldn't let your dog sit at this chain link fence barking and intimidating my children and other dogs!"

Which is true. We have been ambushed a number of times when passing this house without noticing the sleeping dog behind the chain link fence. Like dog like owner.

"I cleaned up after my dog, that's the law!" And we walk away. Wiley's and my heads down. Receding behind us -- "It's my private property and I'll do what I want! You can't just let your dog poop wherever he wants! ... No respect! ... Ruining my yard! ... My dog has a right to bark at whoever he wants! ... No respect! ... Woof woof woof! Woof woof! ... Woof woof!"