Black Swan v. Old Brown Dog

While staying in Velbert with more family I found a new friend. His name is Milo and he's an enormous brown dog. His owner/keeper told me he "weighs" 58 kilos. Which "translates" to 128 pounds. Sadly, since his family had a baby, he hasn't been able to get as much attention as he wants. He sits with his frowny puppy face at the window looking in on the children playing. From what I'm told, he gets along really well with the children, but he's enormous and the baby is small. The family rightly understands that this dog could eat their child. Anyway, Milo stays outside and doesn't get as much attention as he probably should. I should note, that he is fact a well cared for dog. He's very healthy and the family loves him, but he COULD eat their baby.

Anyway, as I get bored a little hanging out with middle eastern folks for hours and hours on end waiting for nothing to happen and not being able to converse because I don't speak any middle eastern langauges (except enough arabic to get myself into trouble). So I asked if I could take Milo for a walk. Of course, he went nuts, he started jumping on me. Nearly 130 pounds is heavy when a dog is fast and can jump really high. Anyway, I calmed him down for 3 second, enough to get his leash on, so he wouldn't run off, or if so at least he'd simply be dragging me.

As we started down the road, it was drizzling, but Milo was so excited; he was smelling stuff and peeing on things. Good dag activities. Of course, he was nearly dragging me. Forget that I significantly outweigh him; in every other athletic category he's a lot stronger. So I went along for a walk. Had I had roller skates, it would have been a dandy morning jaunt. Just a few hundred meters (or yards is you prefer) down the road there was a little fenced in area where ostensibly birds come to bathe in a man made pond, and have a quiet area where people and dogs won't bother them. Sitting in the pen was a large black swan. At first Milo saw the bird and walked away. He made a little detour to the other side of the road so as to not have a confrontation. This bird I should mention was probably only 20 to 30 pounds. Yes, Huge for a bird, but not very big compared to the dog. I thought it was rather amusing, but Milo seemed to think less of it.

So we went for a little stroll further, beautiful community gardens with a very German feel. In fact, it looked more like a series of cottages with lawns, except that the cottages were small storage spaces and the lawns were flower and vegetable gardens. Velbert, it bears mentioning, is an extraordinarily wealthy little community. Think Winnetka to Chicago is like Velbert to Düsseldorf.

As we turned around to head back toward the house the mood of the walk changed from Milo dragging me to me dragging Milo. I discovered for a third time that day how strong a 130-pound dog can be. Surely enough we passed the swan again. This time as Milo was lagging behind he saw the swan take an interest in me and so Milo thought he'd check out the bird. Luckily, the two were separated by a fence, which I believe was high enough that Milo couldn't jump over it without a dog trampoline. As soon as Milo came close, the swan quickly turned its attention to the dog. A showdown began!

They stared each other down for nearly half a minute. When Milo finally moved, he approached the bird (probably to make sense of the bizarre smell of this bizarre creature) the swan responded by perching up, sending his neck straight and head high, puffed his chest, opened his wings slightly, and angled his head down directly at Milo. I have to say, it was intimidating. Intimidating enough, indeed, to make Milo put his tail between his legs and walk away without a nice goose dinner. Now that's what I call excitement!