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    'At The Dog Park.' Derek Updegraff PDF

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    LizbethDresden

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    'At The Dog Park.' Derek Updegraff PDF

    Uploaded by

    LizbethDresden
    63 views3 pages

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    'At The Dog Park.' Derek Updegraff PDF

    Uploaded by

    LizbethDresden

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    of 3

    D erek U pdegraff

    At the D og Park
    - Runner-Up: Big Sky, Small Prose Flash Contest -

    he crazy lady with the Doberman’s back, over by the front gate

    T asking her same question: “Your dog have balls? Hey, does that

    dog have balls?” Her dog has balls, and he’s mean and couldn’t care less

    about what she says. Yesterday I saw him running all around the parking

    lot with his leash on before chasing a jogger. She’s there calling out and he

    doesn’t respond to nothing. I hoped he’d get hit by a car or run off into the

    mountain, but then again it’s not the dog’s fault he’s such an asshole.

    “None of these dogs in here have balls,” I shout back.

    “What!” she says.

    I walk closer to the gate. “No balls. Only your dog has balls. That

    sign you’re standing by, it says, ‘No balls.’”

    “It doesn’t say, ‘No balls.’”

    “Read it. Dogs need to be spayed or neutered. That means no

    balls for that guy there.”

    She lifts the latch and comes in anyway. “It doesn’t say that.” Her

    dog wastes no time, runs away from her with his leash on and zeros in on

    something called a Whoodle. The pretty-boy owner told me it was a cross

    between a Poodle and something else, some small breed that starts with a

    W. You’ve got a Shepsky, he told me. German Shepherd and Husky mix,

    CutBank • 39
    right? And I said he’s just a mutt, no fancy hybrid, just a m utt from the

    shelter.

    I don’t worry about my dog in here because he can take care of

    himself. And he listens. I hike off leash in the mountain, and when he

    runs off, I give him time, then call him back, and Bam! he’s there, right by

    me on the trail again.

    But this Doberman and his dangling balls zeroed in on that

    boy’s Whoodle, and the Whoodle’s a hyper thing, thinks the Dobie

    wants to play. It sticks its ass in the air and lowers its head all playful, its

    tail wagging like crazy, but the Dobie’s tail isn’t wagging, and its chest

    puffs out and it bumps the Whoodle’s side, and just like that the Dobie

    spins the Whoodle to mount it, but the Whoodle flips on its back in

    submission, so instead of doggie style the Dobie is all up on this dog in

    the missionary position, and the Whoodle’s owner is screaming like crazy

    from twenty feet away, yelling for the dog to stop humping him, that he’s

    a boy anyway, and to please get your dog off, Ma’am!

    The crazy lady’s oblivious, filling her water bottle at the drinking

    fountain, and Whoodle boy won’t dare get closer, so I go over there and

    yank the Dobie off the pup, and he bites my arm hard, and I’m about

    to punch it in the head when my m utt’s right there biting its neck. Then

    when my arm’s out, he wrestles the Dobie down and clamps down on his

    balls, dragging the poor bastard by his coin purse, deflating any envy.

    40 • Derek Updegraff
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