It has been almost a while now since we have had Chuckles in our family,what a great experience it has been for all of us. We bought Chuckles on a whim back in the fall of 2007, when she was about 3 months old. A beautiful, shy, pure yellow lab, with the whitest coat with small touches of beige on her ears. 
Our daughter was begging us to get her a dog for some time now, but it never seemed to be the right time and it probably wasn’t the right time when we decided to buy Chuckles, but we did.
Being that we never had a dog before it was both intimating and exciting at the same time. You know, you hear so many stories of dogs chewing this, tearing up that, going to the bathroom all over in the house and so on. I was hoping there wouldn’t be too many late night walks and that she would hurry and take care of business outside instead of doing her business inside the house.
It hasn’t been easy, but it has been all worth it. We could never have imagined how we could love a dog as much as we love her. Having her for all this time, we know her quirks, her habits and she knows ours, it’s an amazing thing to watch as it develops and grows.
On this Sunday morning, the weather was finally warming up with spring in full bloom with the hot days of summer just around the corner. My daughter suggested that we take Chuckles to the dog park which was a few towns over. It was situated in a park like setting with a separate fenced area for dogs to roam around. In fact, there were 2 enclosed areas one for small dogs the other for larger dogs.
Chuckles does not get a chance to run around much as we don’t have an enclosed backyard. When we do take her out for a walk she gets too excited when she see’s people and especially dogs so you have to hold on to the lease. She gets happy and wants to say hi by barking and jumping with her tail going back and forth. So it was decided, a trip to the dog park was in store for today.
Our drive to the park was as usual for Chuckles, she whimpers, cries, just plain nervous, why you ask? It’s simple, she thinks we are going to drop her off somewhere or take her to the vet because on the ride back home she is always much calmer.
Once in the enclosed area, you have to remove the lease and the collar to avoid the dogs getting entangled with each other. Chuckles is a loner, she runs around for a while by herself, checking out her surroundings. At first, she doesn’t play with the other dogs until a few of the other dogs start sniffing her which she doesn’t care for. 
The other thing that my daughter and I noticed, was some of the dog owners are just too full of themselves, it’s like their dogs are the greatest and perfect, which they’re not. There was this one dog that would not stop bothering Chuckles, he would jump on her, follow her, at times they would raise their paws which to me looks like they were fighting but according to the experts out there, they were just playing. As for me, I cannot tell the difference.
So this one dog who was aggressive continued to harass Chuckles, then we heard a loud yelp it was Chuckles she was bleeding from the mouth, both my daughter and I rushed over to her and pushed the other dog away from her. I had paper towels with a bottle of water and was cleaning her mouth, we didn’t know what happened, at first, we thought it might have been her tongue being ripped or worse, she looked so scared, with blood dripping. This was the first time that she was hurt but thankfully it was only her gums that were bleeding.
The dog’s owner was explaining to us how she was surprised that happened because her dog has never done that before…yeah right! While I was holding trying to stop the bleeding, the other dog kept coming towards Chuckles and wouldn’t go away, for a split second my instincts took over and I was going to kick the dog out of the way, but then I stopped and realized, “wait” “I said…I am at the dog park, I can’t kick this dog”. Imagine me kicking a dog at a dog park, how crazy would that have been.
We finally stopped the bleeding and by that time my daughter did not want to stay any longer. This ended our trip to the dog park. Both Chuckles, myself and my daughter had some kind of day at the dog park. Till next time.