The Buddy System

The old adage “A dog is a man’s best friend” really holds up in the Nagasawa household these days, especially Saturdays. My girls, namely my wife and daughter, are usually busy with our daughter’s hula and Tahitian dance class, where my wife is kind of a dance mom, but in a good way and not like the reality TV show.

Saturday is my bonding day with our dog Buddy, and it’s when I take him to the veterinarian, the dog groomer or the pet store. As I don’t get to spend a whole lot of time with him during the work week, I look forward to our Saturdays together.

Since we finally had some nice weather, I decided to take him to one of those dog parks. We’ve been there a few times before ,and usually my wife and daughter are with us. But this time it was just us boys.

When we got there, I saw that there were only five other dogs running around with their owners. Buddy went right to it and started to play with his other four-legged friends. For the most part, all the dogs are well behaved, a major criterion for the dog park. But dogs will be dogs, and sometimes they can get into a small tussle.

The funny thing was, by sheer coincidence, all the dogs there were named Buddy. So when we owners called out to our dogs to stop them from fighting, all the dogs were pretty confused. We owners were laughing about it as we each confirmed that the names of our dogs were all the same.

One attractive young couple seemed enamored with my Buddy, as the woman, who looked like Scarlett Johansson, wanted to pet him.

All the dogs were running around, and out of habit all of us owners continued to call out to them by name, and the dogs paused but didn’t know who to go to or what to do.

I guess the young couple decided to leave, so the woman called out to her dog and her boyfriend. He apparently has the same name as me. “C’mon Ron, get Buddy and let’s go!”

My Buddy and I looked at each other and must have thought the same thing:

“Is she talking to me?”

rnagasawa@midweek.com