An open letter to Princess

Hi Princess. How are you? That’s good.

Well, it’s been almost a month since we parted. It did end rather poorly, didn’t it? I guess there’s plenty of blame to go around.

I have a new park now. No, it’s not as fancy as yours, no birthday reminders, or gifts, or groups. It’s a little clunky to get around. But we all like it very much. Mostly because we can bark what we want. We’re a rebellious group, we do like to bark our own opinions.

I don’t know how much you’d like it. There aren’t a lot of rules. I know you like rules. Structure can be a good thing for many dogs.

In your park, you got to make the rules and enforce them against whomever you wanted. I guess that made you the bully. And you were quite a good bully my friend. You bullied people to delete their profile, when they wouldn’t do that you just deleted them yourself. You turned good dog against good dog. Hey, you even had people so scared they deleted their profile on other sites. I mean really, a tip of the tail to you.

You still have your very strong, very virile park, while we have our little one. You have thousands of members, we dozens. Our little defections have probably not disrupted a blade of grass in your park.

But you couldn’t stay out of our park could you? You had to come slinking in (or at least someone doing your work), posting your picture, stirring up drama, scaring our scarred little dogs. Some, at the mere scent of you, were ready to abandon our park and run blindly into the woods.

Of course you’re presence was easily detected, the scent of weasel that drifted over us, the sky suddenly growing overcast, the poor spelling. A strong, sudden move, charging in at us, barking loudly, “I am here, fear me, run!”

Got to admit, not my style. What would I do? Well, funny you should ask. See, I’m a little dog, not powerful like you, I don’t need to stand in the middle of the pack and bark for attention. No, see what I would do is, say (hypothetically) that I figured once I began asking for e-mail addresses from other members so I could share with them your response to Tanner’s banishment, you would banish me in punishment.

Hypothetically, even before you realized what I was doing, I would use another computer, use another e-mail address, use another picture of a dog (not one found on Google, nothing as pedestrian as that) say a friend’s dog, and create a new profile so, when the day came I was banished from your park, I was actually still there, like you, hiding behind another dog.

So, you know, just thinking out loud here, while you have patrolled your park keeping everyone in order, one of your nicest, most subservient dogs would be, in reality the Foley Monster.

But why do this? Is your park just so cool I had to sneak in? No, see, you’re kind of predictable. I didn’t know how things would shake out, but I had a plan of action, and knew it would anger you, and you would seek retribution. So, while I waited, occasionally having my puppy make comments here and there, nothing too obvious (he’s kind of a dullard, by the way, that’s a clue) I would gather information about the Doggy Park you run.

What I didn’t count on, is the number of dogs who’d join me, dogs with connections I don’t have and man they found so much….boring information: company addresses, employees, home addresses, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, I mean stuff no one wants posted but still nothing earth shattering.

But I’ve got to think there’s more out there, and when it’s found, wouldn’t it be just the coolest thing if it was posted at 3:00 AM on a Sunday like McGyver’s was and sat there on your site for everyone to see. You got to admit, pretty cool. Unless, of course, you find out who I am. Just to make it fun, I left one blatant clue, and another that gives the name away, but you’ve got to be pretty savvy to pick it up.

But it doesn’t have to be. So here’s the deal: You stay out of our dog park, you stop bullying my friends and let us play in peace, and that hypothetical profile of mine will quietly disappear. But, if you insist on coming running into our park causing a commotion and scaring my friends, well then “game on” my friend. The ball is in your court.

As Woody said to Sid in Toy Story: “Play nice.”