The Dog Park Days

Last week I discovered that there were actually two dog parks in Knoxville so I decided to try them out.

The first one was a bust. It was very dusty and there were too many big dogs. Maia does fine when there's just one or two large dogs but she just couldn't hold her own when there were so many. I had to give her a little pep talk after that outing. I said "you gotta stand up for herself Maia! Give a good bark and let those big dogs know who's boss!" I don't think she really got it. I kind of felt like it was a look into the future with my children. Although I hope I never have to give such talks or be on the other side and talk about why it's not nice push your friends. I'm sure it's inevitable though.

The second park held much more potential; we tried that one out the next day. We have since went several more times. There was still a little "incident" during the first visit but I decided it wouldn't ruin our one dog park outing place. There was a little yapper of a dog who liked to bark in Maia's ear and instead of barking back, Maia took to cowering and got bullied into the pond. That was when I knew it was time to leave. And the part that really bugged me about it was when I was trying to get Maia out of the pond, the owner of that stupid yappy little dog just stood there while his dog kept barking at Maia and scaring her further into the water. Ugh, stupid dog owner.

This was before the stupid yapper dog came; Maia was investigating the premises.

In spite of the "incident", like I said, we still decided to go back because overall, Maia loved it. There is a pond, that I have already mentioned and pictured above, which has a downhill stream that feeds a much larger "lake". There is also a ton of running space and although there is still a lot of dirt, there is also some grass which makes it a little less dusty when the dogs are all running around like crazy. We have found that Maia really likes the water; it's way fun to watch her run around in it. She still hasn't mastered swimming in the lake yet though. She's sticking to the "baby pool" for now.

You can kind of see the lake in this picture. A nice little path surrounds the lake too which is nice place to walk around for the Doggie Supervisors.

The aforementioned Doggie Supervisors.

This large space sits in the "dry part" of the park. It really is perfect. I tried to get some video of Maia running around but it didn't come out very well. So just picture a little dog that looks like she's scared spitless (only she's really not) running with her butt hunched to the ground being chased by another gleeful looking dog. It's pretty amusing.

Maia likes to play "tag". She gets the attention of another dog by provoking it somehow. Well, I don't know if provoking is the right word, since she's not actually being mean about it but she tries to get the dog's attention either by running around and around the other dog or kind of acting like she's charging the dog. So once that dog agrees to play with her, she'll run away like her tail's on fire and then after a little while, stop, turn around and hopefully see that the other dog is actually running after her. And if it is, then she'll take off again and the process repeats. It's not often that she can find another dog that likes to chase her as much as she likes to be chased though. It's usually a short-lived game, but in some cases when she feels like the other dog is gaining on her or she needs a break, she'll jump up on a rock or a table which is "Safe". (Remember the game of Tag? This is the doggie version.) And she'll take a breather before she takes off again.

It's really all quite entertaining and the Doggie Supervisors get quite a kick out of it and like the proud parents that we are, we just love when Maia has found a good friend. We're always sad for Maia when that dog's owners decide it's time to go and Maia still wants to play.