With the approach of Memorial Day, the Grand Marais Tourist Park is rapidly filling up and brings to mind memories of my recent stay in an Arkansas RV park. I have especially fond memories of the dog culture.
Traveling in an RV brought me into a whole new world— RV people and their dogs.
The Park I stayed in this past spring was full of dogs, and I couldn’t have been happier. Schnauzers…labs… pugs… shaggy dogs…hunting dogs… lap dogs.
Life was so much easier when I wasn’t the only person whose dog barked at anything that moved. Most everyone else’s did the same.
It was a relief to be among people who didn’t freak out when a beloved pet propped on its hind legs and did its business in front of everyone.
I appreciated not having to explain the empty plastic baggies filling my pockets—just in case I had to clean up my dog’s poop job.
Combine the laid-back atmosphere of an RV park with dog people and you get some strange etiquette.
Take a simple thing like names. Heck, people knew Goldie the Lab’s name, but they don’t know mine.
Dick and I fell into that habit and referred to specific people by their dogs. “Hey did you see Bernie’s (the neighboring chocolate Lab) people leaving?”
“Did you notice the picnic table at the Schnauzer people’s place?”
Another unusual etiquette form was the early morning doggie duty time. Each morning I joined a string of people with hastily thrown-on clothes, frowzy hair and Baggies in hand, making a beeline to the far reaches of the park so our pets could perform their morning duties.
The first morning, I was embarrassed by my uncombed hair and unbrushed teeth, then realized that everyone else looked like me. We had all jumped out of bed to answer the beck and call of our dogs.
We politely acknowledged each other but no one scrutinized. That way, later in the day, with combed tresses and brushed teeth, we could pretend we hadn’t seen each other’s predawn self.
A gathering of dog lovers in one spot makes for a nice situation if you are a dog person but I wondered about the unsuspecting non-dog-lovers who accidentally came to the park. Probably a moot point since I don’t recall meeting anyone who wasn’t accompanied by a dog.
Finally, I did see a cat. Dogs were so commonplace that I began to wonder if any cat people owned RVs but this mystery was solved one morning when I spotted a large feline. There it was—sleek and happy— lounging on the dashboard of a large and beautiful RV, comfortably curled up on a soft carpet bed created just for it.
As it looked down on me, I realized that, of course, cat people also inhabited the park, but no self-respecting cat would lower itself to go out and mingle with dogs.
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