Every morning in Prospect Park there are off-leash hours until 9 am. The chances of me actually seeing the world before 9 am are generally slim to none, but yesterday morning at five am I was staring at the ceiling wide awake and completely miserable. So I got up. I made myself coffee and quietly snuck Matty and Leeloo, their leashes and some poop bags out of the apartment.

Tino was sleeping, and I really didn’t want to deal with him, either. He’s horribly leash aggressive, and we aren’t sure what to do at this point about it. When he sees another dog he starts growling and barking and choking himself at the end of his leash, and it sounds horrible and scary. I know all he wants to do is play, but it’s hard to explain that to someone who has a tiny puppy on the end of their leash that’s cowering and piddling itself in fear. It’s something we’ve been working on, but we haven’t seen a lot of improvement in. If you have ideas for me, let me know.

Anyway, Matty and Leeloo, the dream team, headed out on their walk, and they were pretty jazzed just getting out there, seeing the sights and smelling the smells. I got to the meadow area of the park and unsnapped their leashes, and it was a few seconds before they both realized they were unteathered. Leeloo kind of jumped up and down a few times, and then looked at me like, “Really?!” and then she was off, gone, sprinting down the field, running for the pure joy of running. I never see her so happy as when she’s barreling at full speed. We’ll definitely have to go again.