One of the reasons I moved to Portland is its general love of dogs. Almost everyone here owns at least one canine companion, which is great. With the increase of dog owners, though, the chance of incidence increases. And... actually, I'm not going to try to make this sound intelligent, I'm just going to rant about what happened today. Here we go.
Bailey, my mom's Chihuahua, had a ridiculous amount of energy today, so I decided to take him to the dog park. It's a sunny day, which strikes me as odd since it's January, but whatever. We got there and I let him off the leash, like everyone else does there. Before we could take even 10 steps, a massive standard poodle appeared out of nowhere. This poodle actually lives in the same apartment complex that we do, it belongs to an older woman who also has a tiny, spunky toy poodle. Anyway, in came big, wild dog, and it totally scared the living daylights out of poor Bailey. He did what anyone would do, haul ass! This excited the poodle even more, prompting it to chase him like he was prey. I took off after them because they were headed toward the street. A car drove by and I had a vision of my mom's pride and joy being run over, so I ran even harder and screamed. Idiot woman waited to call her dog until they were almost to the road, not like it listened anyway. Bailey paused briefly to look back at me, but his fear drove him right out into the street. Finally the poodle broke off its pursuit, but I couldn't get Bailey to stop. Thank the deities no other cars happened by. He ran up someone's driveway and finally I was able to calm him down enough to pick him up and bring him home. I felt so awful, I know he was terrified. I was so upset that I needed to go for a walk alone to blow off some steam.
I walked in the opposite direction of the park because I knew that if I saw her I would make some truly vile threats against both her and her dog. I know it's not the dog's fault, but try telling that to the adrenaline that was coursing through my system. Despite my efforts to turn the other cheek, I ended up circling back to the park anyway. The truth is, every time I'm out with any of my dogs and she's out with hers, that curly monstrosity ALWAYS rushes over to my dogs and freaks them out and she NEVER does anything about it. And I'm fucking tired of it! And I wanted to tell her that. The exact phrase in my head was, "Be grateful that he wasn't harmed. Keep your dog away from mine," with maybe a few colorful adjectives included, maybe not. By the time I got there, she was gone, which was probably for the best. Undoubtedly, I will see her at some point, hopefully when I'm calmer, and I will be able to say something without having to call her a cunt. Let's hear it for maturity.
Still seething with rage, I went on a really long walk. While moving my feet, I spent my time considering my perceptions of Portland before moving here vs. the reality I've met since moving here. Some things are just as I'd hoped they would be, some things are better, some things are worse. The main problem is... I am a southern woman, whether I like it or not.
I absolutely hated the South when I lived there. Hated. I'm an open-minded person, but I kinda find many people in Portland to be a bit extreme, just too much. Not any one group, I mean everyone. Liberals, conservatives, meat-eaters, vegans, motorists, bicyclists, pedestrians, libertarians, anarchists, artists, musicians, rich people, homeless people, dog owners (!), so on and so forth. Can we all please just take a deep breath and get over ourselves for a minute? I love that there are so many different types of people here, but there's almost this sense of entitlement that everyone seems to have. Then again, this is probably just indicative of people everywhere, and I'm just in a foul mood. Sometimes I don't think this is the place for me, but then again I don't think any place truly is. If I want to be happy I have to work with what I have. I just wish that, oh I don't know, everyone would just... ACT RIGHT! *sigh*
Crappy dog-owning neighbors and all.
End rant.
