Dog Park

Dog Park

“The lock on the gate is broken, I’m afraid Rover will get out,” Jane said to her father.

“How did it get broken?”

“I don’t know. It was fine yesterday. I left Rover here when I went in the library. It’s a town dog park but it was lockable yesterday. The lock is made so we owners can lock it and unlock it as we go in and out, and little kids can’t. That’s to keep the dogs safe so we can let them off leash. But the lock broken now.”

“Well, who’s lock is it?”

“Huh?”

He held up the lock “Who is responsible for this? Who makes sure it’s taken care of?”

“I don’t know. I just know how to use it.”

“Well, how did you find out how?”

“My friend Sally told me.”

“So you don’t know anything about the maintenance of the park, you just use it? Maybe we should find out a little more about it then we can find out how to get the lock replaced. What do you think?”

They started asking questions, eventually finding the woman who started the park ten years before. She was in the hospital with pneumonia! She’d lost her precious dog two years before, but had not replaced her yet, saying it was “still too painful.”

Suddenly getting a new lock was not enough.

The new “Susan Lawson Dog Park” was dedicated two months later. Susan was honored by all the people currently using the park in a lovely ceremony on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Her new friends, Jane Windsor, and her father, John, brought her over, with Rover, their dog, they’d actually been visiting her regularly for weeks. John and Jane had found they had a lot in common, beyond dogs.

Susan and Rover were both delighted!