I knew it would be bad, but not this bad.
You’ve been seeing a lot about Pickle, Robby and Brianne’s new puppy, in BEAGLE MAN. I wrote about him back on February 1 (“Uh-oh. New-Dog-in-the-Pack-Alert!”). Remember my prophetic words in that post? I said, “Can you imagine when little Pickle arrives on the scene? It’ll be Kemba who?” I followed it up on February 17 with “Pickle-Mania.” In that one, I showed a collage of maddeningly adorable photos of Pickle, which I dubbed “The Adoration of the Puppy.” So you can’t say I didn’t see this coming.
But oh-my-god, last Saturday? My worst nightmare. Beagle Man took me to Winslow Park — along with Robby and Pickle. Now you gotta understand, I have a certain standing in the dog park. I’m known. All the regulars call me by name. Newcomers admire me, almost without exception. “What kind of dog is that? He’s beautiful!” “Look at that face! Is he a puppy?” “The eyes! He looks so smart!” “That’s the best-looking dog I’ve ever seen!”
That’s not what happened on Saturday, though.
The first person we run into is Mike, Beagle Man’s dog-park friend. He’s with Max, of course, my best friend. And what does Mike do? He rushes over and says, “That must be Pickle!” — as if he’s just laid eyes on the Lion King! Max was no better, sniffing all over Pickle while giving me the cold shoulder. Same thing from the whole dog park crowd — it was all, “Aww . . . he’s so little!” “Look at that sweet puppy!” “Can I pet him, please?” “Is he a black Lab?” (Duh. No, he’s a great Dane.) I may as well have been invisible.
Hey, I get it. They want us to get used to being together. They want me to know Pickle’s part of our pack. Fine. I accept that he’s “family” — though I could do without the “Uncle Kemba” and his “nephew Pickle” verbiage. But even though I’m stuck with him, I’m gonna try to keep our joint outings to my park to a minimum. At least until he’s bigger and not so damn cute.
Beagle Man always has a lot to say, so I’ll just pipe up in The Duck Dog Speaks whenever I can.
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