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Conroy Pit: Where kindness is attached to a dog by a leash


When the Zombie Apocalypse arrives, I know where I'm going.
Conroy Pit, the off leash dog park near my house.
Yesterday, it looked like the Walking Dead if the Walking Dead was filmed in Ottawa and all the zombies wore big fat winter coats and galoshes. There were hoardes of people milling along the trails. We even saw a squad of Portuguese Waterdogs on their daily constitutional.
Sometimes, you have to jostle through bouncy canines having a go at a stick, or chasing each other. Sometimes, they are all congregating around the orifices of the unfixed, reminding their owners that it is spring, and it's time to plug those up or cut them off.
Anyway, it was a marvellous way to spend a late winter day.
I'm saying I want to be at Conroy Pit during the Zombie Apocalypse because I know I'd be safe there. At Conroy Pit, there isn't one living, breathing soul who isn't a kindly saint put on this Earth to help a fellow man or woman.
Yesterday, we were approached by a frantic woman who had lost her beautiful white Samoyed. The dog had taken off on her, and she was begging everybody to help her find Ruby.
Don't worry, we told her. Somebody will notice that Ruby was without her owner.
She seemed unsure, so we walked with her a while.
I suggested she wait at the Big Giant Head, that place where everybody deposits the doggy doo. Ruby would be there by the time she show up.
Sure enough, as we approached the Depository, we saw two Samoyeds, one on a leach.
There she was, the lovely Ruby, being protected by a half dozen of Ottawa's best citizens.
The woman just started crying in disbelief.
It's one of those great dog park stories.
Like the time Scott accidentally left his camera on top of his car and drove off.
Minutes after posting an ad on Kijjiji, he got a reply from a woman who had picked it up out of the ditch.
It's just that kind of place.
So bring on the bad people, and demons, and crooks.
They are no match for the wonder of human kindness that is attached to a dog by a leash.

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