Giant George by Dave Nasser and Lynne Barrett-Lee Read Free Book Online

Why wouldn’t they? George was totally gorgeous.
    I guess we just hadn’t figured it out yet.
    In Tucson there are several dog parks—places where people can take their pets to run around off the leash, play with otherdogs and generally enjoy some downtime together, safely away from any roads. Our nearest one was the Morris K. Udall Park, which was named after an esteemed Arizona politician, Morris King Udall, who’d served in the House of Representatives for thirty years. Morris was a bit of a local hero by all accounts.The state of Arizona was always at the forefront of championing the rights of Native AmericanIndians anyway, and Morris, together with his brother, Stewart, was responsible for several political initiatives to support them. He was also an enthusiastic and committed environmentalist and saw through a lot of important legislation. It was a nice park; I’m sure he would have liked it.
    The park was a five-minute drive from our new home and was split into two big areas: an area for puppiesand small dogs, up to around thirty pounds, and another area for adult and bigger dogs. Right away this gave us a problem: George, at just a few months old, was still very much a puppy, but already weighed more than the maximum thirty pounds for the puppy area. Still, since he
was
a puppy, we figured he should be in the small dog area. After all, you wouldn’t leave a young child in a schoolyardfull of teenagers, would you? But right away, on our very first visit to the dog park, it appeared he wasn’t welcome in the puppy part. Though he wasn’t doing anything wrong—he was just doing what puppies do: running around, having fun, getting to know the other dogs—he was clearly the object of disapproval.
    “Did you hear that?” hissed Christie. She was sitting at one of the benches in the shade.I’d been throwing George’s ball for him and had just sent it soaring. He galloped off to get it, and I sat down.
    “Hear what?”
    “What that woman over there said!”
    “What woman over wh—”
    “Shhh!” Christie whispered. “She’ll
hear
you!”
    “Oh, right,” I said. “Sorry.” I followed her gaze. “What,
that
woman? The one in the green?”
    “Yes,
that
woman. Her.”
    “So what did she say?”
    Christie moved hermouth a little closer to my ear. “She pointed and she said, ‘What are those folks doing, bringing
him
in here?’ And then she shook her head. Look, there!” Christie now poked me in the rib cage. “Look—see? She’s pointing at him again!”
    I rubbed my rib. “Just ignore her. He’s a puppy, so he has a perfect right to be here.”
    She beckoned to George, who was galloping back with his prize. “Hmmph,”she said, picking up the ball from where George had dropped it. “
She
obviously doesn’t think so.”
    “Well, that’s just too bad. He isn’t doing anything wrong.”
    I took a look at her as Christie stood and hurled the ball into the air again. The woman’s dog was small and well manicured—like a lawn, a bit like her 1980s haircut. The dog was white, and looked like it might be a Pomeranian. It also,I saw, had a bow in its hair.
    The bow told me nothing, of course—absolutely nothing. But at the same time I really couldn’t help but consider that… well, it
did
kind of figure. Would she, I wondered, view George a little more kindly if we’d taken the trouble to accessorize his head? But no, that was silly; it wouldn’t make the slightest difference.
    It was about then that the woman glanced inour direction,before turning back to the other owner she’d been chatting with, their conversation clearly still about George. George was still doing nothing other than playing with the other dogs and puppies, and, if anything, was doing so a little shyly. You could see that he was nervous about being there; he was actually a bit anxious about all the other dogs milling around him. With or withoutribbons in their hair, they were still dogs, pack animals with a code of