Earlier this evening, we joined several friends at a neighborhood park for a free concert. We’ve been to many such concerts; they have them every Saturday night in the spring and fall. We usually bring our dog, as do many other people, and the dogs are normally as well behaved as the people who bring them.
About five minutes into the concert, Schatzi started lunging to the end of her leash, trying to get to another dog somewhere behind us, yipping, growling, barking, and whining, carrying on as if she’d seen a coyote or a bobcat. I did my best to restrain and calm her down, and finally had to hold her to keep her still. But it wasn’t enough . . . every few minutes she’d start howling and yipping again, flapping around in my arms like a freshly caught bass. Ruined the first half of the concert, she did, and embarrassed me to boot.
At intermission I thought I’d better take her back to meet this dog she’d been trying so frantically to get to. It wasn’t a dog. Some asshole guy behind us had three ferrets on little leashes. Ferrets, stinking to high heaven, the very type of verminous creature dachshunds are bred to kill. No wonder Schatzi was spazzing out!
Is it just me, or is there something lacking in the judgment of a person who’d bring pet ferrets to an outdoor event where half the audience has dogs?
It probably would have upset ferret person to learn that less than an hour before, as we were leaving home for the park, Schatzi caught and dispatched a ground squirrel in our driveway. She did it by grabbing the squirrel in her mouth, giving her head two sharp shakes, and breaking its back. All in less time than it would take you to say “sic ’em.” So I didn’t tell him.
Ferrets. What the hell is wrong with people?
Some people want to be different, recognized, and paid attention to. The trouble is, they don’t want to work for it, so they do stupid things like streaking and bringing ferrets to outdoor concerts. Not only do they traumatize their animals but dogs and people as well. It’s also a power trip. “See what I can do and you can’t do squat all about it.” I would have been very tempted to turn Schatzi loose and hope there was some local ordinance about not keeping vermin as pets.