A walk in the park, canine-style

Our humble hamlet got its very own dog park last weekend, and our two pooches give it a definite paws up.

Until we took them to the new park Sunday morning, Aquinnah, the chocolate lab, and Martha, the pit bull/lab mix, had little experience with being off leash. We live on a busy street and our yard is only partially fenced. So the norm, for them, is to be leashed whenever they’re outside.

When we entered the empty park, closed the gate and removed the dogs’ leashes, they didn’t run around like Snooki on a drunken foray to the beach. Instead, they did what dogs do best, which is to sniff every inch of their territory, to find out who had been there before them. The nose knows.

Only when they had finished  that all-important task of collecting, entering and analyzing olfactory data about the new digs did the dogs cut loose, chasing each other and, in Martha’s case, occasionally bounding into the air with gleeful abandon, like a frisky lamb on a springtime romp. When Martha’s exuberance started to wear on Aquinnah, who’s a bit older, Liz took Martha into the section of the park that’s for small dogs, while I stayed in the adjoining big-dog zone with Aquinnah.

Of course, they immediately ran to the fence that separates the little-dog area from the big-dog area and promptly started barking at each other. After a few minutes of that, we saddled them up and returned home, where they were contentedly pooped for the rest of the day.

There’s nothing like the sight of two dogs frolicking off-leash to illustrate what it means to be truly joyful, and living in the moment. If only humans could achieve such a blissful state so easily.