Dog Island

Im a dog person. I grew up with dogs, worked at a kennel, did some dog training, volunteered at a dog shelter. I love dogs. Dog owners, though... 

The rear end of a dog as it growls and lunges looks a certain way to its owner, and a very different way to the person who sees teeth. The divide between Liberals and Trump supporters is nothing compared to that between people on opposite ends of a barking dog. Some saintly people have trained the hairs on the back of their neck to stay down while they make soothing sounds and quarter away from the animal, not challenging it but not giving their back. Everyone should know how to handle themselves with a dog. These animals are somewhere between the human world and wilderness and they function as intermediaries between us and nature, they are our wilder selves. Being nice, making friends, mastering fear, accepting the role of the responsible human. We are richer for having dogs in our tribe, but we must pay for it with patience and sometimes a little bravery. 

My friend Paul lives by this code. An out of control dog doesn't make him indignant, even if he’s with his kids. Paul takes a knee, offers his wrist, and emits friend-making pheromones. Even if the owner is drunk on a picnic blanket, it's not about the owner, and now is not the time to get uptight. Dogs tend to like Paul, and when they don't, he moves on. It's not that Paul doesn't have hackles, he just wants to live in the world where ambient dogs are ok. I get it.

But me, sometimes I get mad.

I paddled out to the island with my daughter and her friend around sunset to climb her favorite tree. We tied up on the East side and walked along the trail. A homeless guy had his tent set up by the main firepit and he was listening to some music. The lawless feeling is one of the things I like about the island but you don't get that without some actual lawlessness, so I made peace with the homeless guy in my mind. We waved at him and made our way to the embankment above the tree. It's the big cypress at the Western tip of the island. As we rounded the corner, two medium sized dogs wearing dog-life jackets came at us barking and snarling. My daughter was in front of me and I pulled her back. Sometimes aggressive dogs just need a moment to get used to the idea that you showed up and they will circle back to their owners if not actually be ok with you. It's a bad idea to turn around and run. These two got close, lunging at my legs. It seemed to me at that moment that it might get a piece of me, and if not, maybe a piece of one of the kids. I had one of those metal water bottles, about a third full. I caught a dog on the side of the head with a solid backhand as it made another pass at my legs. The bottle made a high pitched ringing noise that told me I hit a tooth. It turned around and went the other way and the other one settled into barking and snarling, but now a couple steps back. I got mad. 

The dog owner was watching but not running over to help. I said “Put your dogs on a fucking rope before I bash its head in!” Or something like that. I think there was the threat of violence to the dogs. I think I made a grammatical error like using the singular for “rope” and the plural for “dogs”. I felt I had repulsed the immediate threat and it was time for me to share some thoughts and establish myself as being a little dangerous. 

His response was complicated. “Sir!” He yelled over the barking, “I don't appreciate you talking to me like that!”

“You don't appreciate me talking to you like that?” I answered.

“That dog is the sweetest dog you'd ever meet!” He said, I think referring to the one I brained with my water bottle.

“Well, I'm not feeling that right now!” I said. We weren't getting anywhere and it was time for a safe exit. But not before I let this guy know that the island was governed by the same laws as any other city parkland, including leash laws. I had been disappointed to learn this, when APD promptly returned my email enquiring about the status of the island, because it diminished my sense of it as a magical, exceptional place, hidden in plain sight in the middle of Austin. I continue to want the island to be a portal to other worlds, a spaceship landed in our lake, surrounded by a force field that has protected it through the decades (I would prefer to write centuries or millennia but readers or previous posts will note that this seems unlikely).

“My wife is eight months pregnant and we capsized a kayak! That’s why we’re here! If you’d just back off and give us a minute!”

Now I felt kind of bad. From the time we rounded the corner, I was focused on the dogs, not even seeing the wife, who was resting on the bank. Instead of saying anything else, I backed us down the trail. the dogs didn't follow. 

We played on a rope swing on the other side of the island with the high pitched taste of bitterness and uncertainty lingering in my mouth. I couldn't say what they kids felt, the incident had driven us into different worlds. Going back and offering to help seemed like the wrong thing to do, so we would just have to sit with it.

Later they were gone and we climbed the tree and saw the sun go down. The kids found a spray can of Obsession fragrance, by Calvin Klein, that had found its way onto the island. I remembered this cologne being associated with wealth and sex when I was in high school and it seemed odd that it was in a discarded spray can. The island can be like that planet that Thor and The Hulk landed on in Ragnarok, with random junk that just falls in from around the galaxy. We sprayed it on and srtutted around streaked with mud and dust from cypress bark. When the sun was good and down we paddled back out to where it had been, into the diorama of bridges and trees and skyscrapers on the wide, black carpet of river.