Dogs in the park

The dogs have had their bits whipped off. Well, I imagined that they whipped them off, but they don't, they make a hole and pull them out. This involves less trauma (in the physical sense) for the dog, but as the dogs were already, errrmm..., developed there is a bizarre empty bag of skin now hanging there. Which isn't especially aesthetically pleasing. (There are alternatives - but I can't believe that that is going to be any more attractive).

They've also had all the shots that they are supposed to have, and so are allowed to go out and play. There are very few places around here that one is allowed to have one's dog off the leash (it's a leash in this country, not a lead) - one of them is the dog park, but as the dogs are scared of almost everything, including other dogs, we didn't think that was a great idea, so instead we went to the Kenneth Hahn State Park. You're not supposed to allow your dog to roam free there, but there's an area which used to be the Baldwin Hills reservoir, but the dam holding it back failed in a rather dramatic fashion in 1963, and now there's a big bowl shaped grassy area. There are usually very few people there, and people often let dogs off the leash there.

Here's a map, in case you're interested. (You can see the two green stripes leading to where the big storm drain is).


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We got there on Friday afternoon. There was a poodle (which seemed to be called Poopsich) there, with its owner - the owner had such a strong Russian accent that I had trouble understanding him, and he didn't understand the boys. I thought that he was potentially a recent arrival, and so we could bond and talk about visas and things, but he had been here since 1980. (He also told me that his dog was two months old, and he got it in January, so maybe he had a problem with time, or maybe there was more of a communication problem than I thought). The small poodle was frightened of the dogs. The dogs were frighted of the small poodle. At least to start with.

But after a while, they played nicely.



Stevi, from Southern California Golden Retriever Rescue, wanted a nice picture of the boys with the dogs, so they can prove how lovely they are. This was the best we could do: