We get Japanese tourists at one dog park. It must be in a Japanese tour guide. They appear outside the park's chain link fence and take pictures of everyone. They won't come inside the park. So you're there in old clothes playing with a dog or picking up some dog crap in a plastic bag and some twenty-year-old Japanese tourists are taking your picture. Caption: Crazy Americans in a pen with man-eating canines.

There are some irritating rumors printed repeatedly about that park. We were always reading in the media that it was a great place hook up and to meet "hot babes." I spent hundreds of hours there and never saw anything like that. Yet once again, I'd be reading that stuff in an article posted on the bulletin board in the park. This woman and I would make fun of it as we surveyed the middle-aged and cranky, the married, the pre-existing couples, the elderly, the infirm, and the children who filled the park, many of whom had forsaken humanity for their dogs.

The only people hooking up were dogs. Most of their assignations were casual in nature. I finally figured out that the woman who helped run the park was telling the media this stuff repeatedly. She herself was single.

I like attention as much as the next person but I prefer to be photographed when I'm not covered with dog slobber. The ad on Blogcritics portraying Pam Anderson overlaid with a photograph of a dog is telling a truth right out of the universal subconscious. Hanging around dog parks can indeed subject you to the glare of the flash bulbs, just like Pam Anderson is. When you hang out with charismatic animals, you have to be prepared for whatever comes your way.