Separate from my mutt.
No sweat—reconvene at the truck.
Howdy tails (tales).

You attempt to coax her,
black-and-white coat,
toward you.
Say you were going to take her.
I hear: steal your dog.

Without calling the number 
on her tag,
you tell me
I am a bad owner.
The dog park is 138 acres—
arroyos and hills, miles of trails.

Howdy comes here every day
to excoriate her zoomies,
to be a socialite mutt.

Wherever we walk—
middle of nowhere, mountains—
she knows the rule:
if she can’t find me,
if she is truly lost,
return to the start.
Return to the truck.

Mine is simple, too:
if I don’t see Howdy for twenty minutes,
I return to the truck.

This day,
twenty minutes pass.
I follow my rule.

There is Miss Howdy Ma’am.
By the truck.
An older woman is coaxing her close.
I call Howdy’s name.
Hoowwwwwwdyyyyyy.

She runs to me the second she sees me.
But the woman—
self-declared dog-park police—
does not agree
that fifteen minutes
is an acceptable absence.
She yells.
Says my dog was unaccompanied
for a very long time.
Says she was about to take her.
I tell her:
Howdy comes here every day.
If we’re separated,
she knows exactly where to go.
Which is exactly where she was.

The woman performs a Santa Fe scoff.

I flip the script.
So—you were about to steal my dog?
She has a collar.
A phone number.
An address.
You didn’t think to call?
This is the dog park.
She’s not running loose
down Cerrillos Road.

As she walks away, she says:
Your dog deserves a better home than yours.

Do I tell the dog-park police
my dog has lived—
will live—
a thousand more adventurous lives
than hers ever will?

L.W.

Howdy almost got dog-snatched last Sunday. Had to vent somewhere. Thought my website would do.