The adventures of SD Juno and SDIT Kaline (and their human, Colt).

09 October 2012

The magic of long down-stays

Juno and I went to ALDS Game 3 in Oakland tonight, and goddamn, she was awesome. I had a tiny temptation to take Kaline simply because of his name, but thankfully I listened to my rational mind and accepted that it would be a terrible idea to take a five-and-a-half-month-old to a playoff game. Also, due to training in the park, there was no possible way to get there early—in fact, we were late, horror of horrors—so it wasn't like I could try and introduce Kaline to players or anything.

Traffic didn't get horrible until I got to the exit for the ballpark. It took about half an hour just to get from there into the jammed parking lot. So we missed the top of the first, plus the first two A's batters in the bottom of the inning. Argh.

Other than that, amazing. When we got through the gates, we were faced with an enormous, rather terrifying crowd, wall to wall in the concourse. Juno, fantastic pro that she is, led me confidently through all those people until I told her "right" as we got to our section. Without her, I probably would have frozen, maybe had a panic attack; Juno kept me moving and all I had to do was follow her and count section numbers.

We found our row, and my seat was smack in the middle. We had to squeeze past about ten people, and it seemed like every one of them had a big juicy hot dog in his or her lap! Like a mantra, I murmured, "Juno, follow, leave it." And she did! Never even glanced at a hot dog. Got to my seat, put down Juno's mat, and she curled up there, dozing through pretty much everything. I was able to keep score, concentrate on the game (a really good one, despite the fact that the Tigers lost 2-0), and not worry about Juno getting antsy or needing to pee or trying to eat random things on the ground ... She is the best, and I adore her.
Juno peeks out from under my scorebook.

After the game, practically all my joints had stiffened up, so Juno did momentum-pulling around the park so I could say hi to my usher friends, then helped me up the stairs. (Doing the stairs with Kaline last week was torture. I kept grabbing onto the seats, which aren't ... nice ... for grabbing.) On the way out, we had our only crappy moment.

I could hear people behind me muttering, "Do not pet"—reading Juno's bold white-on-black saddlebags, impossible to miss. Then I saw one of these young idiots come up behind Juno and ostentatiously pat her on the rump. I whipped around—well, as much as I could, being gently pulled forward and with a painful back—and snapped, "Don't [bleeping] touch her. Can't you see she's a working dog?" The guy replied, "I thought I was supposed to." I gave him my best you-are-a-complete-tool look. "She has Do Not Pet all over her. Do. Not. Touch. Her." And he melted back into the crowd. Of course Juno ignored the whole thing but as we walked away I heard people talking about the "mean Tigers fan." Ah well. They are not my problem.

We came home and Dad reported that Kaline had behaved really well during their "guys' night in." Kay was super glad to see me and Juno, and I at least was glad to see him too. Juno was like, "Ugghhh, get away from me, pest!"

My little man has some pretty enormous pawprints to fill someday. Grin.

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