Last night, I was at my dog obedience club’s weekly practice. I’d recently enrolled Luigi in our Novice Handling class. Luigi is the epitome of what most people think of when they think *Dobermann*.

Before Luigi, I’d taken Baby to class for years. Baby is all natural. That means she has her tail and ears as-is from birth. Adorable!

So it was amazing to me that during last night’s class, it was the first time anyone has said to me they had a bad experience at a dog park because a Dobie had “taken down their dog.”

Luigi is a big lug and most times gets bossed around by the littlest girlie dogs in our household. He is even-tempered and when company comes over, he is the first to greet them with his ball for a good game of catch.

But when we lined up for sits and downs, I knew the woman next to us was telling me that from fear. It’s a darn shame. A shame the incident at the dog park happened. Mishaps between dogs often emerge from mis-management from their owners. I don’t trust dog parks for that very reason. I have seen people walk into a dog park with a dog that was too aggressive and unruly to be there in the first place. And in the second place, the owner has no responsible nature nor dog management skills to be there.

Once upon a time, when Baby and I did go to a local dog park, I got mauled by two jumping dogs. They wanted the Frisbee I had brought for Baby. Their people were trying to get control of them, but they ended up winning and scratched my leg so deep, the blood gushed out like the non-stop leak in my bathtub faucet, and it took huge amounts of paper towels to stop it so I could drive home. That didn’t stop us from going, though. What stopped us was the time Baby drank the contaminated water the park had to offer and when I came home from work the next day, she had thrown all over the entire house and thensome. That was a night in the emergency hospital I refuse to repeat. And that was what stopped our dog park days.

Helen