Underdog Beach

Jade and I own two dogs, a 90lb Rhodesian Ridgeback named Kaidance and a smaller, runty cocker spaniel named Clementine. The bigger dog is motivated by food like some child of the Congo while the cocker's emotions are controlled more by human touch and affection, like a sexually abused teenage girl. When we take them to the dog park or dog beach, Kaidance stands by our side, proud of her owners and too snobbish to associate herself with the other dogs, the mixed breeds, the mutts. Truthfully, I think she finds even the purebreds to be far inferior to her own breed. She slinks slowly through the park like a member of the K-9 KKK. White is right and down with brown, I'm sure is what her mantra would be had she been born in the south rather than the midwest.

Clementine is different, behaving more like a Care Bear Cousin while out in public. She pounces through fields and streams to spread her love to anyone that glances in her direction. She enjoys anyone that gives her the time of day and seems to be perfectly happy with trading Jade and I in for another couple at a moments notice.

We take the two of them to dog parks on occasion, a place where we can take them off their leashes and really just set them free, which, as I said before, usually means that Kaidance is laying idly by, watching the mudbloods co-exist in her domain while Clementine gets humped up and down the park. Since Los Angeles is bordered by an ocean from it's bottom most sector to it's most northern peak, it is strange that it only contains one singular dog beach and that you have to drive all the way past Malibu to get there. We'd never taken either of our dogs to the beach before but thought that maybe if we took them somewhere fun and wonderful, we too could experience the excitement of owning a dog that ran and played with you. A dog that would leap in slow motion into the oncoming waves with you, bouncing after the receding current. We could all laugh with the other dog owners and enjoy a little slice of Heaven.

We drive seventy minutes before arriving at the dog beach, which is surrounded by an obviously dog friendly community. Everywhere you look there are trim girls on rollerblades, scooting along with fit Italian greyhounds and gay men in tank tops toting Chihuahuas in purses. There are older women with great danes and young boys with golden retrievers. It is a perfect dogtopia, a place where humans and canines can come together in harmony. We pull over in the free public parking, snap on the dogs' collars and open our doors, all four of us smelling the fresh ocean breeze. This is nothing like Van Nuys. This is what California is suppose to smell like.

The dogs are excited. Kaidance stands at our side, trying to act superior to the moment but her front is lost while her tail wags. Clementine runs in a circle around me, tying herself to my legs with her own leash. I begin to untangle us and she barks once before squatting down to poop while staring over her shoulder at me. I say her name once, disdainfully, and then scoop up the tiny pile of turds and carry it along with us, swinging it next to me like a maggot's lunchbox.

We cross over the cement and onto the sand and there is a moment of pure magic, a moment where everything and anything is possible. Dogs run free while beautiful (and ugly) people bask in the sun. It doesn't matter who's dog belongs to whom. Today, here, everyone is everyone's keeper. All humans feed all dogs any treats. I watch a sporty looking black and white border collie run at top velocity across the beach, his sparkling blue eyes reflecting the ocean, pinned to the frisbee flying just feet above his head. He leaps, catches the orange frisbee in his mouth and crashes into an oncoming wave before emerging with his toy and, if it's possible, smiling. The owner, the kind of guy you'd find in Any Weight Room, USA, calls to him and the dog comes running. He scrubs the dogs head, takes the frisbee and the act starts all over again.

A terrier named Jack runs up to us and begins sniffing Kaidance's butt. Kaidnace growls and the little dog runs away. Clementine tugs on her leash, ready for action. All she sees are objects of affection, people she can sap love from like maple trees. The sand is hot and the dogs are lifting up their feet one at a time. We find an unoccupied spot and set down our red towels, which the dogs immediately jump on, cooling their steaming pads. Kaidance and I sit down at the same time, only I realize too late that Kaidance is not sitting down so much as just squatting to pee all over my towel.

Great.

I stand up, say her name with disgust and then laugh and look around. I don't want to be judged as "The Psycho" that came to the dog beach today and started screaming at his dog for pissing. Instead I pet her on the head, give her a treat and just look at our beach neighbors and say, "Oh, DOGS!" They laugh and I think I'm in. The couple to our left is an older man and woman. I never catch their name but they've got a bigger dog, a mix, maybe part lab, part heeler, it's hard to tell. It's definitely a dog and it's definitely friendly. It comes over and welcomes us and Kaidance just stares at it, wishing she had a cross to burn in front of it's owners towels. The dog turns and runs off and Jade and I decide it's time. We're going to unleash our pets and watch them run free. We can't WAIT to see them leaping through the air, drool dangling from their mouths like shoestrings, their legs pumping through the sand like desert turbines. Jade tells me to wait. She says, "not yet" and pulls her camera from her bag. She unsnaps Clementines leash and holds her by the collar. I do the same to Kaidance. "Are you ready?" she asks. I nod. "On three............one.........." my grip loosens, "two"...................I'm thinking about shouting yee-haw when I let her go to help take her to "the next level"........"THREE!!!". We both let go simultaneously and Jade begins rapid snapping pictures of the two dogs sitting in the sand right in front of us, looking slowly from side to side. As far as anti-climactic went, this really took the fish taco.

We try coaxing them away, pretending to throw invisible toys and then rocks and then we just start pushing them but the harder we shove the deeper into the sand they seem to dig their toes. Jade and I stand up and begin walking backwards towards the water, curling our fingers towards them, "C'mon.....c'mon......Kaidance........Cleeeeeeementine.......c'mon........" They stand on our singular towel. Kaidance watches the power bar the lady next to us is munching on and Clementine watches a nearby family, wishing she were part of it. It was so out of her character to be so anti-social. Maybe it was the new surrounding. Maybe this was a new technique she was perfecting, trying to imitate and therefore overtake Kaidance's alpha dogness. I wasn't sure.

I quickly tire of cooing them and march back towards the pair of imitation humans. I hook my finger through Kaidance's collar and begin dragging her towards the vast and hungry ocean. We get halfway there and she seems to be trotting just fine so I let go and she turns around and runs as fast as she can back to the blanket. She lays down, looks at me, then turns her head in the other direction and pretends to be asleep. Clementine lies down next to her and I turn to Jade and shrug. I'm standing in knee deep water and wondering why I'm the only one. Why isn't anyone else in here? I'm wondering if the water is filled with clumps of dog hair, canine feces and bitch piss. I look down and can sort of make out my toes through the muck so figure I'm okay as long as I don't drink any of it. Jade is standing next to me and when I look over, she's staring at her toes as well and I wonder if she's thinking the same thing.

Behind me I hear a sudden and intense scuffle break out. Dog barks, growls, those feral animalistic screams that tell you things just got ugly. The lolly-gagging around and horse play has just taken a nasty turn and if nobody steps in, someone is going to be walking away with a bad limp and a little less blood. I turn and see two dogs in a tangle of bared teeth and raised fur. They leap at one another and roll over and over in the sand, snapping at each other's necks, stomachs, paws, anything they can sink their, uh-hem, canines into.

Mr. Weight Room comes tearing over, screaming out his frisbee dogs name. He's shouting over the dog yowls, hollering for the dogs to stop, screaming for them to "knock it off" but the dogs are no longer docile, domestic creatures. Today, now, this instant, they have transformed under the glare of the sun like werewolves at the full moon. The nice woman that was sitting next to us, the older one with the lab / heeler is stumbling blindly across the hot sand, her flip-flops falling off her feet after a few steps, her hat trying to blow off her head, her skirt billowing around her waist. She stops next to the bar room brawl and begins saying, "Stop! Stop! No! No!".

The two humans shout at their dogs. The dogs shout at each other. Eventually Mr. Weight Room takes the risk and sticks his hand into the spinning blades of ivory white teeth, manages to grab his frisbee dog by the collar and yanks them apart. He doesn't bother scolding his dog but rather screams at it, jerks it by the collar and gives it a soft boot back towards his blanket. At this point I fully assumed he would realize that his emotions had gotten the better of him and was about to act embarrassed, act ashamed, much the way I had when beginning to scold Kaidance for peeing on my blanket. But he doesn't. Instead, this man surprises all of us. When a dog fight breaks out at a dog park / beach, it's much the same equation as kids in the schoolyard. No one but the children's parents will step in. The rest of the kids just stand and watch. Stand and stare. And now, at the dog beach, at least twenty of us, the nearest occupants, stood watching this man, woman and their respective animals. The man, much like his dog, turned on a moments notice and begins screaming at the woman. He tells her to "Watch your F-ing dog, lady!" only instead of the letter F he says the whole four letter word. I'm not offended by this word and can even sometimes be found sitting in corners mumbling it to myself, but really, there's a time and a place. Jade and I stand in the knee deep piss water, watching. The pregnant woman and her young husband watch. Children wait to see what his next move will be. The woman with the lab / heeler apologizes, grabs her dog by the collar and begins dragging him away. Mr. Weight Room shouts after her, tells her she's an "F-ing idiot and needs to get her dog under control if she's going to bring him to the dog beach". She apologizes again and he tells her to "stop apologizing and stop being an F-ing dip-S". At this point, the woman releases her dog, who runs back to it's blanket and the woman doubles back to the man, telling him to stop being such a "J-off" and that it was his dog's fault to begin with. She turns to walk away and he tells her that she's a "big, dumb, C" (C is another name for a woman's genitals) and she turns around AGAIN and calls him a bastard. He's says, "EF YOU!" and she says, "EF YOOOOOOU!" and storms off.

Had I seen this in a movie or on television I never would have believed it. Certainly what happened was upsetting but this WAS a dog beach and when you bring your dog to a dog beach, even if your dog isn't normally prone to violence, you had to be willing to accept the risk of things like this happening. It was just part of the process. I really felt like the woman was a nice person and wasn't so much reacting in anger to the situation of the dogs but was rather reacting defensively to the man's constant, repetitive and unprovoked attack on her.

Mr. Weight Room watches her walk away, all the way back to her towel, where her husband meets her and asks, "what happened". Once Weight Room was certain she wasn't coming back, he turns to meander back to his dog. Always the victim. As he starts to walk away, however, I suddenly found myself staring in his direction, upset with what I'd just witnessed. "HEY!" I called, before I could give myself time to reconsider what I was doing. He keeps walking, "HEY!" He turns around and begins looking from face to face. Was someone talking to him? Again, before I can think, I shout, "What you just did was completely inappropriate." He pulls off his glasses and clutches them in his right hand and cocks his head to the left, definitely staring at me now, the geekiest looking kid on the beach. I repeat, a little louder and with a little more articulation, "WHAT YOU JUST DID..........WAS INAPPROPRIATE".

My heart is pounding inside my chest and my stomach is quivering. I feel a little light headed and my knees start to feel weak. He's about seven yards away and if he chooses to power walk over to me and smash my face with what is almost certainly ring studded knuckles, I doubt there is anything I could do. Certainly, once it started happening, it would just be a bunch of kids on the playground, watching the bully beat up the nerd. They would watch him sink his hairy fist into my mouth and I would drop into the ocean like a rock.

Rather than beginning his death march to me though, he instead tries to defend his position, stating, "Her dog started it" and, while I didn't actually see the beginning of the fight, I say, "Yeah, I saw how it started and I don't care. You handled that situation poorly. You are an ADULT and you should act like one". I was articulate and confident and wasn't even wearing my lucky speedo. He looks at me and I'm wondering what else he's going to say. He's gearing up for something, you can see it in his eyes, but before he can speak, the pregnant chick says, "Yeah" and then her boyfriend chimes in, "Yeah, that's true". Behind me, Jade says, "Yeah - inappropriate". Pretty soon, all the schoolyard kids watching the mounting chaos are volunteering their opinions, stepping up. Everyone is nodding and mumbling, "inappropriate".

Mr. Weight Room doesn't say anything else. He bends down and picks up his dog's frisbee from the sand, turns and marches off towards his blanket, towards his piece of the property. I look back towards my dogs and they're both watching me and I hope they understood what just happened and were maybe proud of me. Jade and I walk out of the filthy water and meander back towards our blankets and sit down. I reach into Jade's purse and grab a luke warm water, my mouth suddenly very dry.

I look out across the beach of people and happy animals and watch as Mr. Weight Room leashes up his dog and makes his way back to the parking lot.