LUCKY DUCKS

Two Ducks by Walter Inglis Anderson


On Saturday at PetSmart while I was collecting signatures and yapping at all who were polite enough to listen, I shared a table with Dixieland Dog Rescue. There were about a dozen mutts waiting to be adopted. They even had more back at the shelter in Grand Cane. Dogs on leashes passing by the crated dogs elicited great excrement! Dixieland accepted many rescuee applications. After careful review over the weekend and the reality of MONDAY kicks in, Dixieland will check to see if the applicant s are still gung-ho about the responsibilities of pet ownership and then proceed with the adoption process.

This is a good rule. I was one of those silly girls in college that fell for the cute puppy riddled with ticks in the cardboard box placed strategically in front of the student union. I named mine after my favorite literary character and four months later Atticus! ended up on a “farm” with the man who washes my mother’s store’s windows. He re-named the part coon “Sea Biscuit,” he told me, because the dog liked to run and run and run around in circles. I think the guy figured “Atticus!” just egged the dog on, and was a silly name to be shouting out over and over again.

When I got Reddy, his name was actually “David” and that still makes me laugh. I had to wait out the weekend as well so the shelter could determine if I was mentally stable (I’m not the one who named him “David”). He had been at the no-kill shelter for six months! He was a member of the Lonely Hearts Club which meant he was among the shelter’s longest residents. So for some reason I passed their test because they sold “David” to me at the discounted price of a cat, and then we rode off together into the sunset. This time I named my dog after an odd duck Mississippi Gulf Coast artist Walter Anderson wrote about in his Horn Island logs. Reddy is also a cold bag of ice. Reddy is always ready to go, and is an easy name to call over and over again. And maybe confusing to other dogs at the dog park.

Which brings me back to the dog park. Ready?

The fence:

I just wasn’t excited about a chain-link fence but a chain-link fence seems the most practical at this point in the research. Dixieland pointed out that the fence can be colored green or black. Now we are talking. Come to find out the fence also comes in the sophisticated colour of olive green.

And then there is the co$t. And of course it’s not cheap. It really needs to be 6 feet high, so now the question is length.

The next step is to find out how much feet we deem dog park boundary. I believe we can ask the city for the fence. To build a model dog park, the city should be behind it so that they can take the credit for it when it actually becomes a TOURIST ATTRACTION and is written up in Animal Planet and Lonely Planet and DoggyStyle. Amenities would follow from the fundraising efforts of the Shreveport Dog Park Alliance .- Yeah, that’s YOU. And then there will be cool things such as trees for shade, marigolds planted along the fence to ward off fleas and ticks (another one of Dixieland’s bright ideas), water fountains + doggy shower (COIN-OP-is there such a thing?), a bench made by a local artist, bulletin board, and of course the poopy pick-up mittens and dispenser, AND trash receptacles. AND…

Our local dog organizations can unite and help us; Caddo Caring Canines, Barkus and Meaux, Red River Obedience, Chamber of Commerce, to name a few.