Poor Confused Dogs

I did eventually make it to the dog park yesterday after the rain abated, taking neighbor dog Molly along with Pappy. The fair-weather dog parkers had skipped the day, and the only ones there was Piper and her owner. Piper's owner and I got into a discussion of aggression worries about our dogs-- "growls when on leash", "sometimes lunges at dogs entering the house", "mounts other dogs".

I left the dog area and took the dogs on a walk around the rest of the park. I began to consider how odd our conversation would sound to some others. While we're worrying about whether our dogs are companionable enough, somewhere else someone is saying "he's just not aggressive enough", "if an intruder yelled at him he'd just slink away", "I wouldn't trust him to guard his food bowl". Poor dogs can't win. They have to be all things to all people.