Unhappy Dogs and Unhappy Smokers

There's been a minor political drama playing out in the courtyard beneath my balcony.

It’s the only fenced and gated courtyard in the complex, so, for a while, dog owners would allow their dogs off the leashes, regardless of Virginia law, which does not allow unleashed, pets, except in sanctioned dog parks.

Unexpectedly one day there were emails and signs that were put up forbidding unleashed dogs.

This seemed sad to me. Watching the dogs romp, and my neighbors chitchatting happily as their dogs played together seemed like a really nice drama to observe below.

Later I heard a rumor that one of the dog owners had complained about one of my neighbors smoking on their balcony. I didn’t notice, because I’m not a smoker, but apparently signs and email warnings had gone up in the courtyard regarding the no smoking policy in my complex.

The story is that the leash enforcement emails and signs were an indirect counter-strike in response to the anti-smoking tattle-tale.

Obviously the real victims are the smoking dog owners. Double misery for them.

This convoluted political background set the stage for the pictures I took yesterday of one of my neighbors who had found some kind of interesting leash that allowed her dog to play and romp in a way I haven’t seen before.

It looked a little bit like a fishing line and the dance between she and her dog was so inter-dependent that sometimes I had the illusion that the dog was only a puppet, a very sophisticated marionette that she was manipulating using the fishing pole leash (which you can barely see in these photographs because I used a filter to mask her identity).

Are you judging me for taking pictures of strangers without their consent?

In that case, none of this story is true. I made it all up and drew these sketches by hand, carefully coloring them with watercolors afterwards.