::more dog park--not gross::

I hope nobody is bored with the dog park yet.
We go there a lot. It's close to our house, and poor Sultan needs a place to have fun.
When funny things happen there, sometimes they get to show up here.

The other day (a while ago, when it wasn't so cold outside that your ears would fall off--and when there were some leaves on the trees) we headed off for some dog park.

Sultan found some cousins to hang out with.

He was pretty excited about it.

And some lady in the background wore some weird socks. But that's not actually part of the story.

Max and Kris went off to play catch, as usual. And as usual some dogs tried to catch the ball when it was thrown to Max.

That gets on Max's nerves a little bit, so he quit the catch game when he saw a fun and exciting stick lying on the ground.

Wow. Sticks are fun. If you're four.

This dog was hanging around him, salivating over that stick.  Kris and I told him to throw it. So he did.

(this is actually a photo of him just before he threw the stick at ME, but that's another story altogether.)
Well guess what happened after he threw the stick for the dog?

This cute dog ended up with the stick. Max was very upset. He kept telling the dog that he hadn't meant to do it, and that's not what he wanted to happen!!
Eventually the dog gave up on the stick.

Ewww.
And boy with stick headed back out into the wild.

He's just not experienced enough to realize how dogs feel about sticks I guess. Sultan doesn't care about sticks at all, so I guess he has no reason to know.

that dogs love sticks!

I love how the tiny dog is chasing him so confidently, like he could actually do something, while the big guy who could just grab it straight out of his hands is just watching.
It was pretty hilarious.

But then evidently Max smelled something "stinky" (big shock at the dog park, right?) and so he went to do something else.
(check out the crazy dog in the background of that last picture. All four feet are way above the ground!)

He went to play in the shot put cage. Or whatever that is.

"Sultan, come! Sultan come! Sultan come!" Sultan does a bad job listening to Max and I. We're working on that currently.

Other dogs show up of course, but no Sul. He's kind of a butt that way.

He finally showed up. Then Max pretended to be a sad puppy in a cage.

Cute! Sad!

Then we went home.
And since there were still leaves on the trees I took a picture of one.

And here we are again at the end of one of my loooooooooooooong photo essays. If you made it to the end I hope you enjoyed it. Can't go wrong with the dog park (unless of course a dog mistakes you for a fire hydrant.)