The Dog Park

In El Valle I have a dog door and Paco goes outside to run free whenever he feels like it. In Santa Fe, I go to the dog park. It’s not your typical dog park, where dogs run around in a fenced in space while their humans kibbutz and break up any fights. The Frank Ortiz Dog Park is 138 acres (I think) of piñon/juniper rolling hills with trails and arroyos and big open spaces where humans can hike along with their dogs or stand around with other humans while their dogs play.

While I’m a relative newcomer to the park, having arrived in May of 2022 and preparing to depart in April of 2023, I’m definitely one of the regulars who knows the names of the dogs that are also regulars and the names of the humans whose dogs play with Anka, my son Max’s two-year old German Shepherd. Paco is 12 now and doesn’t play with any dogs except Anka, who sometimes forces him to play.

There are summer regulars and winter regulars, however. After meeting all the dogs and their humans last summer—Rupert and Maria, Beau and Paul—they disappeared as soon as it was 20 degrees at 8:30 am and the winter regulars arrived. Now Anka plays with Buddy, a doodle dog, Juna (not sure of the spelling) another German Shepherd, and Riley, her best buddy. Rily and Anka can find each other anywhere in the park and take off running around the bushes, rolling on top of each other, biting each other’s fir, nipping each other’s legs, just rollicking around until Riley’s human—don’t know his name—has to go to work or I have to go home.

There’s another winter regular named Amelia, whose dog Santo also likes to play with Anka but Santo is trained like one of those dogs who go to the Westminster Dog Show. Also a German Shepherd, on command Santo sits beside Amelia, looks up at Amelia, walks backward with Amelia, and only goes to play when she says “go.” We all offer to pay the beautiful, young Amelia hundreds of dollars to train our dogs but alas, she’s too busy being a goldsmith and making her way in Santa Fe (her landlord left her without heat for three days).

Rarely do the summer and winter cohorts intersect, but the other day I was there in the afternoon substituting for Max who takes the afternoon shift when up bounces Beau, the big, black Labrador who loves to run between your legs and lean up against your body to profess his love. If you recall, my blog post “In Search of Lost Memories Instead of Time” revealed my accident with Anka that landed me in the ER with a concussion and a bruised rib, so I try to stay out of the way of bounding dogs. But I was so happy to see Beau I wouldn’t have cared if he’d knocked me over. I hadn’t seen him since summer and it was obvious he’d missed me, too. I asked Paul where he’d been and he said he only comes out when the temperature is above 40. Maybe that’s what happened to all the summer people—they’re afternoon people now.

I wonder if people meet each other at the dog park and become fast friends or even lovers. My conversation with them is usually limited to dog talk, but maybe other people start talking about human things rather than dog things and relationships evolve. When I was younger and unloved I fantasized about meeting someone at the Laundromat. I think this must have been triggered by some movie I saw or short story I read, but alas, I never did meet anyone there and I haven’t been to a Laundromat in 40 years. I didn’t have to remain unloved, though, and even better than the fantasy of a Laundromat I fell in love with Mark at the much more romantic setting of the La Mosca fire lookout. Now I’m too old for romance but I wish others the best of luck if their fantasy is meeting a lover at the dog park.