Tales From The Dog Park: Scarlet, the one with a big heart

Scarlet stays close to Rob Breeze. She's a dog (part-Great Pyrenees, part wolf, part other things) and he's a guy, 40-something.

They visit the Old Pearsall Road Dog Park in San Antonio so Scarlet can play, but she stays close to him, very close. She wants to play with my two Standard Poodles so very badly. But she circles Rob, then sits right next to his legs.

She looks up  at him.

"Go on, girl," he waves over toward where my Poodles play. She instead scoots closer to him,  and stares. She wants to play, but her devotion to Rob is strong, Super Glue strong. So he walks close to my Poodles and Scarlet finally plays.

"She won't go too far from me," he says. She’s protecting him. Keeping him safe.

Rob figures she’s repaying him, because he rescued her from certain death eight month ago.

Her first life was as a guard dog, but her heart's too big to do much guarding, so she wound up at the shelter, where they discovered diseases serious enough to take her life.

Ron ended up at the shelter, too, a month after his 17-year-old lab died.  He wanted a quiet dog. With a big heart.

As he walked the shelter’s chain-link row, little dogs, big dogs, all desperate dogs, woofed and leaped, rattling the chains. Too much for Rob, until the end, the last cage, where Scarlet sat quietly, just, well, smiling as he walked by.

He was smitten, so was she.

After  an extended medical stay, Scarlet came home to Rob’s, where she guards his bed until he falls asleep each night. Just like she guards him now, at the dog park, to make sure he’s safe.

So really, Scarlet, sweet, sweet Scarlet, is a guard dog after all.