gangs of new york

We had a lovely Father's Day down on the Upper West Side with the queen of the vizslak blogs, HRH Brisztow Jones (and Karen + Glen). The first highlight was actually finding on-street parking within 200 yards of their apartment.

We then crossed into Central Park and proceeded to trek up and down, into the trees and out onto funny little lawns -- and being roughly 7:30am, we encountered lots of folks out with their dogs. The first unfortunate episode was that Her Majesty dropped her squeaky devil-ball into the pond known as The Pool and then proceeded to nudge it further out with every attempt to retrieve it. Sadly, all efforts were unsuccessful.

We wandered up onto the Great Hill and met a weimaraner and a pug while numerous other small dogs ran about and amused themselves. Jozsi pointed a few pigeons and quieted the crowd. Brisztow flirted unabashedly with Momo. We then cruised down around the North Meadow whereupon we had the second unfortunate episode.

I guess that perhaps only in New York would a seventy-something ask a stranger if they used the e-collar transmitter in their hand and then, when greeted with the redundant answer 'yes,' baptize me a 'cruel person.' I said 'thank you' because it was the only not-cruel thing I could think of. The less-not-cruel thing I wanted to ask was whether she thought the dog that was attached to her by a leash was happier than the two running fiends 20 yards ahead of me. I understand that there are probably plenty of clowns out there who use e-collars poorly -- but that's the kind of prejudice that comes from lack of oxygen due to a cranial-rectal insertion. So here's a picture of our two waiting to heel across the road while some kind of bike event went past. Clearly in pain and thinking vengeful thoughts.

We got back to Karen + Glen's without further incident. Phew. We then left all three of them crated in their cute apartment while we went and had some breakfast at Picnic, just down the street. Once we got back to the apartment, all the dogs took turns with mugging the humans. This is Momo assaulting Meg while Brisztow looks on eagerly -- and Jozsi turns away to continue savaging a rawhide stick. Momo and Jozsi liked Karen + Glen's because there were lots of toys and legal things to chew in between flirting with HRH.

We then came back home and took naps. All in all, a very satisfying Father's Day. Karen's version of events can be found here.