like Neptune rising from the deep
Sep. 24th, 2023 08:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksRight, I'm having a lousy day and I don't post here enough, so I figure I'll write up something nice that happened to me once-- the most memorable experience I've had of a stranger's dog. Not most meaningful, or, necessarily, weirdest, but every few months I remember this and smile.
It was New York City, which means I was automatically cranky and aggravated, and it was high summer, and there is nowhere I have been like NYC for sheer viciousness of summer. It's not vicious because it's the hottest or the driest or the most humid, but because it seems as though it ought to be reasonable, and then after you've been out in it for a couple of hours you realize that summer's jaws have clicked closed and you are being slowly digested by a combination of every bug in the borough, sunlight like the kind of strobe they cannot use on television, and your own persistent sweat. I was on an edge of Central Park, vaguely near the Met but not close enough to make it reasonable to go in for a bit of a cooldown. I was waiting for a bus, which never helps.
There was a fountain a ways back from the sidewalk, one of those two-or-three-tiered affairs with a statue of something not very distinguishable, and in the fountain there were, as is usual on such days, two or three small children, and also a dog. The children were all small enough to have parents who were sitting on the fountain rim and holding them by the hand. The dog was a free agent.
I have never seen an uglier dog outside of photographs. It was a bulldog, a full-sized bulldog, which means fifty or sixty pounds. It looked like a Chinese lion statue crossed with a Chinese dragon statue. It looked like-- you know how there are some species of bat which look like puppies? This dog looked like one of the species of bat which doesn't actually look like a dog. If I had been informed that that dog was some kind of weird eldritch monster being passed off publicly as a dog for camouflage reasons, I would have nodded and moved on with my life.
It was romping, and a fifty to sixty pound dog can get up significant romping momentum. Grinning so widely I thought its head was going to split in half, and with a couple of yards of lolling tongue. There was no obvious owner present, but the probably thirty people who were variously waiting for the bus, running a hot dog cart, sitting on the fountain rim, etcetera, had not yet gotten to the point of being concerned about this, because the dog was not particularly bothering anybody-- was in fact projecting absolute joy to the heavens-- and also this was New York City.
After I'd watched the dog romp for maybe ten minutes, which was long enough for me to start becoming vaguely concerned about the lack of visible owner (I am not from New York City), but not quite long enough for me to feel that I ought to do something about it, a jogger ran in from stage right. He was only wearing jogging shorts and sneakers, and he was holding a leash with a perceptible lack of dog on the other end, and he was maintaining a reasonable jogging pace despite being absolutely dripping with sweat. He was also looking worriedly to either side of him and calling and whistling, but, because he was moving quickly and looking away from the path directly in front of him, he did not see the fountain containing the dog until he was only about fifteen feet from it.
His dog saw him, all right.
I remember the dog as actually bouncing off the second tier of the fountain on its way outward and upward, but that may be the exaggeration of fond recollection. What I am absolutely certain about is that the dog brought a vast quantity of water with it, in a literal wave, and that when it landed on its owner both the dog and the water splash were chest-high and rising. I also recall that it hit his face tongue-first.
I was worried for about half a second, because of course the guy went over backwards, but by the time he bounced on his rear end he was already laughing as hard as the other thirty-odd people in the vicinity, all of whom had immediately lost it. Both the guy and the dog were down for a while, the guy because he was laughing too hard to stand up and was also trying to wrestle on the leash, and the dog because it had found out the one correct thing to be done about this sort of weather and was clearly trying to transfer as much cool water as physically possible onto its human before letting him up. Both of them were transcendently, perfectly, radiantly happy.
Then my bus came.
I didn't have a camera, but I really hope someone in the near-crowd around that fountain that day did. As I said, every so often I think back on it and smile. I wasn't close enough to get splashed, but it pretty well handled that heat wave for me anyway.
It was New York City, which means I was automatically cranky and aggravated, and it was high summer, and there is nowhere I have been like NYC for sheer viciousness of summer. It's not vicious because it's the hottest or the driest or the most humid, but because it seems as though it ought to be reasonable, and then after you've been out in it for a couple of hours you realize that summer's jaws have clicked closed and you are being slowly digested by a combination of every bug in the borough, sunlight like the kind of strobe they cannot use on television, and your own persistent sweat. I was on an edge of Central Park, vaguely near the Met but not close enough to make it reasonable to go in for a bit of a cooldown. I was waiting for a bus, which never helps.
There was a fountain a ways back from the sidewalk, one of those two-or-three-tiered affairs with a statue of something not very distinguishable, and in the fountain there were, as is usual on such days, two or three small children, and also a dog. The children were all small enough to have parents who were sitting on the fountain rim and holding them by the hand. The dog was a free agent.
I have never seen an uglier dog outside of photographs. It was a bulldog, a full-sized bulldog, which means fifty or sixty pounds. It looked like a Chinese lion statue crossed with a Chinese dragon statue. It looked like-- you know how there are some species of bat which look like puppies? This dog looked like one of the species of bat which doesn't actually look like a dog. If I had been informed that that dog was some kind of weird eldritch monster being passed off publicly as a dog for camouflage reasons, I would have nodded and moved on with my life.
It was romping, and a fifty to sixty pound dog can get up significant romping momentum. Grinning so widely I thought its head was going to split in half, and with a couple of yards of lolling tongue. There was no obvious owner present, but the probably thirty people who were variously waiting for the bus, running a hot dog cart, sitting on the fountain rim, etcetera, had not yet gotten to the point of being concerned about this, because the dog was not particularly bothering anybody-- was in fact projecting absolute joy to the heavens-- and also this was New York City.
After I'd watched the dog romp for maybe ten minutes, which was long enough for me to start becoming vaguely concerned about the lack of visible owner (I am not from New York City), but not quite long enough for me to feel that I ought to do something about it, a jogger ran in from stage right. He was only wearing jogging shorts and sneakers, and he was holding a leash with a perceptible lack of dog on the other end, and he was maintaining a reasonable jogging pace despite being absolutely dripping with sweat. He was also looking worriedly to either side of him and calling and whistling, but, because he was moving quickly and looking away from the path directly in front of him, he did not see the fountain containing the dog until he was only about fifteen feet from it.
His dog saw him, all right.
I remember the dog as actually bouncing off the second tier of the fountain on its way outward and upward, but that may be the exaggeration of fond recollection. What I am absolutely certain about is that the dog brought a vast quantity of water with it, in a literal wave, and that when it landed on its owner both the dog and the water splash were chest-high and rising. I also recall that it hit his face tongue-first.
I was worried for about half a second, because of course the guy went over backwards, but by the time he bounced on his rear end he was already laughing as hard as the other thirty-odd people in the vicinity, all of whom had immediately lost it. Both the guy and the dog were down for a while, the guy because he was laughing too hard to stand up and was also trying to wrestle on the leash, and the dog because it had found out the one correct thing to be done about this sort of weather and was clearly trying to transfer as much cool water as physically possible onto its human before letting him up. Both of them were transcendently, perfectly, radiantly happy.
Then my bus came.
I didn't have a camera, but I really hope someone in the near-crowd around that fountain that day did. As I said, every so often I think back on it and smile. I wasn't close enough to get splashed, but it pretty well handled that heat wave for me anyway.
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Date: 2023-09-25 01:27 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2023-09-25 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-09-25 02:13 am (UTC)I would expect nothing less.
I am glad you got to see this eucatastrophe and have it to remember. Love.
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Date: 2023-09-25 02:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-09-25 04:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-09-25 11:56 am (UTC)I’m sure this has been said before, but your skill in writing is something else. I am in awe of your ability to turn a sweet story into a work of art painted with letters. Thank you for sharing this.
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Date: 2023-09-25 12:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-09-25 04:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-09-25 06:00 pm (UTC)This delight blessed my syckful Monday. Thank you
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Date: 2023-09-25 06:22 pm (UTC)Lovely dog, lovely story.
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Date: 2023-09-25 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-09-25 08:49 pm (UTC)If I had been informed that that dog was some kind of weird eldritch monster being passed off publicly as a dog for camouflage reasons--in other words, Stitch from Lilo and Stitch.
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Date: 2023-09-26 06:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-09-26 08:49 am (UTC)marvelous as always
thanks for turning your sucky day to positive energy
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Date: 2023-09-27 02:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-28 03:47 pm (UTC)