If You Love Someone, Set Them Free: Off Leash In Prospect Park

The picture above is an *actual* photo of our dog Oliver in Prospect Park Friday morn...without his leash on. Like FOR REAL.

[Deep breaths. Deep breaths].

This might not seem like a big deal to you, but trust me: it totally fucking is.

When we adopted Oliver 6 years ago from Tri-State Basset Hound Rescue, we got our asses interviewed...HARD. Tri-State is an amazing org, with a whole network of kickass volunteers and supporters, but trust me: your ass is not getting a dog unless you can effectively convince these people that you are not the sort of fuck-up that you appear to be in real life (which, by the way, I think it's fantastic). They deeply care about every single one of their dogs, and take the job of finding new homes for them very seriously.

Anyway.

There were applications, interviews, and foster-home visits, but we finally got ourselves approved. But before we could take Oliver home, they left us with one final word of warning: NEVER EVER EVER take him off his leash.

Our Tri-State interviewer explained to us that Basset Hounds are slaves to their noses. They are trackers, and once they get a hold of an interesting scent, they are helpless to resist its siren call. I specificially remember that this woman said: "it doesn't matter how much Oliver loves you, he could latch on to a scent he picks up, and before you know it he could be two counties away."

Jay-zus.

The disaster fantasies pretty much started immediately. I mean, Greg-n-I are Jewish (read: neurotic), and don't really break many rules, so in addition to dealing with all the new shit you gotta deal with when you get a dog for the first time (i.e. holy fucking fuck: I hope I don't kill this guy), we weren't exactly about to start traipsing around NYC with Ollie freeballin' it. Flash forward 6 years later, and the dude had *still* never been off of his leash.

But, here's the thing: We live about 50 feet away from Prospect Park. And I'd often find myself walking through with Ollie during the off-leash hours in the morn from 7-9am. If you've never seen it before, it basically looks like this:

But instead of people, picture dogs.

It's like Heedonism for puppies. And I'd often walk by, and feel a pang of guilt as Oliver looked on longingly at all the bitches in the hot tub running around with their tops off. He wanted in....BAD.

And I wanted in too, because I truly wanted to see that same look of pure ecstasy on his face. So I started mulling over this whole off-leash thing in my head. Here are the basic facts:

• Oliver has separation anxiety. We've gotten it somewhat under control over the years, but the bottom line is: the dude HATES to be alone. He follows me into the fucking bathroom...is he really gonna run out of the park by himself?
• He loves going to the dog park. He's very social, runs around, and plays with other dogs like its his job, so I know he's comfortable in that sort of environment.
• He needs to be in the middle of the action. If we're at the dog park and there are a group of dogs playing and ignoring him, he can't handle it. So he barks, and runs around them, and basically acts like a little douche until some other dog takes pity on him and lets him join in on the fun. Again, is he really going to run off while there is a dog orgy unfolding right in front of his very eyes?
• Oliver runs fast and I run slow, so in a race, he kinda has the advantage. *But,* he also runs out of steam pretty damn quickly. So if he tried to run, and if I couldn't catch him, he'd probably still end up sitting in a fluffy pile of leaves somewhere, waiting for me to show up when my fat ass caught up with him.

OK, I assume you're all rolling your fucking eyes by now, and I totally get it (I would be too). But trust me when I tell you that I love this little guy so much, the thought of him running away is enough to put me into a Britney Spears, code red, Celebrity Rehab level meltdown, the likes of which none of you bitches have ever seen. And if I brought him to the park for this little canine experiment, and something went wrong, it would alllllll be my fault.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that by this point in the story, Greg had completely bowed out of the entire off-leash discussion. He was not going to outright forbid it, but he was also not going to have any fucking part in it either. Greg has enough to deal with worrying about the all of the unlit candles in our apartment, which he manages to convince himself are all lit, ready to cause a fire, everytime we leave our building, so yeah...there's not much more room left in his brain for anything else to worry about (and as a crazy, neurotic Jew myself, I could respect that).

So, yeah...all this shit was gonna be on me.

But still, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I started asking other dog owners about their own experiences there in order to collect opinions (everyone loved it). I googled "off leash, prospect park" to see if I could find any online horror stories (no). I researched Basset hound tracking abilities (not so hot after all, now that the whole fox hunting thing doesn't happen anymore), and read through profiles on petfinder in search of other Bassets that had just run away (never found any).

Maybe it was time???

I'm a firm believer in the concept of "when opportunity knocks" you better be very fucking ready to jump at it, and last Monday, opportunity came a knockin when Oliver and I joined our friend Blair and his Basset Hound Bill on a morning walk:

(that's Bill looking all regal on the left and Oliver looking old distinguished on the right). 

Blair takes Bill to the park all the time to run his ass around, and there has never been anything even remotely close to a catastrophe yet (at least that's what he told me). So after we got some coffee, Blair convinced me that Monday was THE day that we should test the waters with Oliver (mostly because he swore to me that if anything happened, he would chase Ollie all the way to Bed Stuy and back if need be, but still).

I was nervous as shit, but I figured it might be time to cut the cord.

So I did.

And it was totally fucking fine.

Oliver ran his ass all over the park, played, romped, and just generally had a grand old time. He split his time between hardcore dog on dog playtime orgies and walking around to various people in an attempt to be pet (not sure why, but the dude is borderline obsessed with getting love and attention from strangers. I'm constantly paranoid in thinking that everyone we meet is secretly thinking that we beat him).

Though we need to work on his coming when I scream "OLLLLIVEEEERRRRRR" from the top of my lungs, he never ran far enough away that he couldn't see me. And even in the midst of all of that action, he kept looking back to see where I was, which was kinda cute. When it was time to go, he didn't walk back up to where I was standing, but when I approached him, he also didn't run away and make me chase his ass.

So all in all, it was a completely successful expirement. So much so, that I went back to the park on Friday, BY MYSELF.

I'm going to start working on training him to come when called, and just spend 5 mins before each romp doing the positive reinforcement thing with food until he gets it. But yeah, we're gonna keep going!

Man, they grow up so quickly. I guess this means Ollie has *finally* become a man.

[p.s.: if you go to off leash hours too, and you ever see an adorable Basset hound in a green tie-patterned collar running away, with a crazy, screaming, foul-mouthed woman chasing after him, you'll know its me. So please HELP. Cause I will be so dead if I ever lose that fucker].