Living on a second floor condo, I have no yard or outdoor space of my own. When I return home from work, I take my dog Greta, a 12 year old Airedale, out for a walk. Having spent the majority of her outdoor life on a leash in the city, she is very social and well mannered. Greta makes friends with everyone, from babies in their strollers to seniors, to any of the art students residing in our historic district. She is a Pets On Wheels volunteer. She once charmed a pizza delivery guy out of a pizza and many a toddler out of a cookie or cracker. If she hasn't gotten someone besides me to pet her during a walk before we return home, she starts dragging her feet in protest until I allow her to wait on the corner for someone to amble by and visit with her.
We are fortunate to have a dozen or so little parks and plazas in the neighborhood where I can take her off her leash and she can be a dog, sniffing the grass untethered to decipher it's invisible scents, finding the perfect spot to enjoy a roll on her back, exploring every shrub and bush. In the summer it's much cooler outdoors in the shade of a tree than in our un-air-conditioned home. I usually bring a book to read while Greta does her thing. One little plaza is two blocks from our house, with a WWI memorial and a nice patch of grass on a tree studded hill. It is right next to the private tennis courts, pool and playground and Greta is usually lucky to score a tennis ball that lobbed over the fence and became lost in the thick tangle of English Ivy bordering the courts. She carries it with her proudly until we reach our destination, where she can play with it.
Recently, a homeless person has set up camp on a bus stop bench just on the other side of a low brick wall that borders the square on one side, along a major street that leads to the freeway. He's been there for several weeks now. He's got a small mountain of stash piled up beside him. He's marked off his territory with orange traffic cones, a hub cap balanced on top of one. Recently an assortment of broken cinder blocks have further defined the perimeter of his space. Last week I noticed that they are now wrapped in foil.
A small break in the brick wall is positioned next to his bench providing one of several means of egress from the triangular plaza, this one being on the narrow end of the space. We spend our time on the wider opposite end of the space, further from the busy road. Greta does well off the leash, but I do not want her to venture in to the narrower end where she could slip out of the park and end up in heavy traffic.
This man is apparently threatened by Greta, though she displays absolutely no interest in him whatsoever and has never ventured beyond the brick wall into his domain. Occasionally she trots down to this lower portion of the plaza to retrieve her ball or in search of a stick that may have fallen from one of the trees. On the rare occurrence when she approaches the area near him, the tall and thin bearded man resembling Osama Bin Laden rises, pointing a long crooked finger at her and starts yelling at me to put her on a leash.
There is nearly a city block of distance between he and I. Greta, after retrieving her ball or selecting a stick, returns to me and lays down with her cherished yellow prize or to make work at devouring the stick. He continues his shouting, his arm outstretched and targeted on Greta like a scene from Invasion Of The Body Snatchers where one of the aliens realizes you haven't been snatched, she oblivious to her violation though she has never actually infringed upon his personal space.
Now I appreciate that some people don't like dogs or have an initial fear or apprehension before meeting one. We live next to the Symphony Hall and Opera House. Often our walks take us in front of those venues before or after an event, when people are en route to or from a performance, often dressed to the nines in formal evening wear. We yield on the sidewalk to these cultural attendees, many of whom stop and bend to greet Greta while telling me of an Airedale that once was part of their life.
I really should set things straight with this man (or bring him a batch of cookies or something), but life's got me itching for a fight as of late, so I haven't responded yet as gracefully as I probably should. Technically, Greta should not be off her leash. But then technically, camping overnight in downtown Baltimore certainly is in violation of vagrancy laws. I pay taxes to pay for the upkeep of the plaza. He contributes by sweeping the sidewalk in front of his space. I don't want to displace him. But then I don't want to be displaced. "Build a moat," I want to tell him. But my tendency to avoid confrontation trumps my itch for a fight, so we continue to struggle in our effort to co-exist.
