This evening, after hours spent in cars and on planes, the girls and I went on an outing to get some fresh air and exercise and, it must be said, cupcakes. Annika was traveling by stroller, and Lily by scooter, meaning we were not anybody's favorite sidewalk sight right off the bat. Factoring in Lily's propensity for wild twists and turns and occasional crashes, and my absent-minded tendencies behind the wheels, we were a disaster waiting to happen. Except we weren't. We made it all the way to the market that was our ultimate destination, did some necessary shopping, ate a pleasing number of free samples (a learned behavior I cannot spare my children), purchased our cupcakes, and headed back out onto the not-so-mean but potentially irritable streets.
About halfway back, with Lily yelling from about twenty feet behind me, "Mama! I'm going to up catch you!" over and over, and Annika shouting random syllables in sympathetic joy, we saw a woman with three dogs, purebred pitbulls, up ahead; I could tell Lily saw her just as I did because she actually picked up her pace for a change. "Can I? Can I ask her?" she asked me, and I gave my customary answer. Our rule is she can ask anybody with a dog if she can pet it, and if the person says no, she is to say thank you just the same and back away.
I kept pushing Annika as Lily scooted ahead and approached the woman, a somewhat surly-faced twentysomething who did not reek of child-friendliness. The dogs seemed nice enough, but my hackles went up as we got close enough to see the choke collars, the fact that the two females had very recently given birth, were still nursing, and that the male wasn't neutered. I heard Lily, polite and eager, hair wild from the windy ride, ask if she could pet the dogs, and I heard the woman, not rude, definitely surprised, say no, she could not.
This happens so rarely that Lily always seems both disappointed and dismayed--she has expressed her opinion before that these dog owners are really depriving their dogs of her, as well as her conviction that people don't know that she is a dog owner herself, and not just an ordinary dog novice kid. This time, for whatever reason, she didn't just walk away, shrug her shoulders at me. "Are they boys or girls?" she asked, and the woman, backing away from her a bit, jerking the dogs on their leads, looked at me, then away just as quickly. "Two girls and a boy," she mumbled, trying to turn her back on us, keep walking, but the dogs--sensing interest, pulled toward us, panting and jostling for attention.
I realized I was gripping the stroller handles quite tightly; my hands hurt. I relaxed them, stretched my fingers, looked at the dogs. I had a very bad feeling about these dogs, about what they were being used for, about the way the woman holding them was behaving. She was staring at Lily, who kept openly, curiously, firing questions at her, and she wouldn't make eye contact with me. I waited for Lily to say what she always says when she sees choke collars, which is: "My mother says those collars are not nice for dogs," but she didn't. I thought about asking the woman a question or two myself, about these pretty, tired-seeming, untrained, straining at the bit, apparently untouchable dogs, but I didn't.
Instead, I spoke sharply to Lily, more sharply than I had planned to, told her to come right now, that we needed to get back home. She said good-bye to the dogs and shot me a mad look, and I started pushing again, and Lily started scooting again, and Annika started calling out words again, and we all headed back up the street toward home.
About halfway up the block, I turned, in spite of myself, and the woman was still standing where she had been, frozen in place, watching us go. I wonder if Lily made her think about those dogs. I wish I could stop thinking about them myself. I hope I am wrong.
2 comments:
Okay, Amy, am I an idiot? What are they being used for?
I have seen a number of pit bulls in our neighborhood I suspect are being used to breed dog-fighting dogs. Makes me physically ill. I am trying to think of something to do about it.
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