There’s a dog named Preston, a Westie, I believe, who is featured in a commercial for a bank. His young dog mom poses the standard rhetorical question, “Who’s a good boy?” then gets schooled by the pup, with the help of large glowing, talking buttons, on the attributes of the advertised institution.
I guess the commercial has already seeped into our collective consciousness and spawned related references.
Just a block away, several yard signs are on display, playing off the ad in the way they encourage pet owners to bag up their pup’s waste. (Who’s a good neighbor? You are! Oh yes, you are!)
The sign always brings a smile to my face when I go on my morning walk with my spoodle (spaniel-poodle mix.)
I love our walks. I love to see the small changes in weather from day to day. I love unexpected, at least, unplanned, conversations with neighbors. It’s amazing to me how often I can recall the leashed pet’s name but not always those of their owners.
Of course, there’s a few people on my block and adjacent streets that I see every day. Our conversations might be more extended and more personal. During the pandemic, I really relished these conversations as they represented my very limited face-to-face contact with others.
These coffee-less klatches are usually longer in the morning and afternoon and shorter during nighttime walks. At night, most of us are just interested in guiding our dogs through their toilet routine and getting back home before our favorite talk show host’s monolog.
On such a mission the other night, I ran across John (of John and Betty) and Cocoa’s human mom. (I knew one neighbor by name but not the other.) They seemed to be waiting for someone driving and looked up from their conversation, towards the street, often.
“Hi John, Haven’t seen you for a while.” Before he could bend over and rub his hands through my dog’s fur, I added, “Are you having a dog parent convention or something?”
John briefly tried to confirm that I probably knew the other woman or have seen her on walks. She was holding her large-pawed dog in tow and offered up that they were waiting for an Uber. He pointed to a thin black teen maybe 30 feet away.
A stranger in our ‘hood all of us agreed. “Lord know how he got here.” John explained, “We’re waiting for an Uber.”
The female neighbor, who I didn’t know by name, chimed in.
“He said his father would wake up after getting drunk and beat him. He said he wanted to stay at a relative’s, that he didn’t want to go back to his father’s house.”
I still did not understand how the kid came to this intersection but listened to the continuing explanation as I was now vested in waiting, with the others, for the Uber.
A dark late model sedan pulled up. Cocoa’s human mom looked at the license plate and confirmed this was the vehicle that her phone app told her to wait for.
John, slipped her a crisp twenty to give to the driver as a tip. She talked to the driver about the ride that was arranged for the teen and confirmed with the kid that his aunt, who said she would take him, lived at the address given to the Uber driver. He nodded, then slid along the back seat.
No money was ever placed in the boy’s hands.
I considered that this trip might have been a stunt concocted by the kid to go on adventure, but I also considered that this kid needed help. Getting away from some place early in the day seemed more pressing at the time than plotting out where he would end up.
I felt good about living in my neighborhood.
John and his wife accompanied me on walks after I fractured my arm and wasn’t fully confident about taking my pup out at night. The young dad down the street has knocked on my back door a couple times to let me know I accidentally popped the trunk of my car. Mis-delivered packages intended for me, small parcels from Amazon or UPS, usually find their way to my building’s front hallway within a day or two after they landed nearby.
But these people, even if they didn’t know me, knew who I was and that I belonged. It was easier to comprehend their kindness.
But this was different. Or, was it?
Knowing that a “good neighbor” treats everyone well, not just you, not just people in their zip code, is no small thing.
Hi Deb, Thanks for this great post. We have three dogs and I am usually walking Bones and Kane together and Mia, our lab-hound, separately. There are many different reactions from people and other pets. I try to appreciate all, watch out for all, and not take it personally if someone does not appreciate me or my great pets. It is a practice especially for the people I see every day. One day a man I call, Mr. Dior, because he always wears Dior t shirts and clothing, turned from ignoring us to charging at Bones to tease him for his barking. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, I just said–he’s saying hello. We were all fine but how crazy for this turn. I make an effort to always pick up our poop, even then I forget a bag I look for trash or litter to use. I also have an incantation I use when I see rouge dog poop on the street–“Bad Owner!”
It’s so funny, how people get hung up about dog poop. I don’t make it my mission, to pick up dog poop all along my path, but if I have an extra bag, I bag it up. Not that the act is going to earn me a spot in heaven, and I do think pet owners should exercise responsibiity, but it’s not such a big deal. Let’s cut each other some slack and help create places where we want to live.
The 2nd part of the story really got me. Thanks for posting this incident, no small thing indeed.