The City of New York:

New York, NY - Peter - Tuesday, April 1st, 2003 : goo

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Some people take cigarette breaks; But me, every hour or so, I walk up onto the overpass-catwalk that crosses the FDR parkway on the east side and stand in a sunny spot and do breathing exercises while watching the sun arc across the sky.

This morning, while I was there, a man was attempting to walk his dog, a little sheltie, over to the park ribboning the river's edge. The dog was seemed terrified; she was looking over the walkway's edge, down over traffic, drooling, losing bladder control, hyperventilating. The man was alternating between trying to drag the dog by her leash, and pushing her from behind. I watched them approach, up the mesh ramp, for a couple of minutes.

When he approached, he explained "its her first time in the city", which served pretty well to explain why she was so scared.

I urged him to take a second and let her sit still and calm down, explaining that I was probably as nervous the first time that I came to the city... she just needed some time to adjust. We petted the dog and talked to her in sugar-sweet tones; we let her sniff around the ramp and look wherever she wanted. We sat there and both coddled her for about 5 minutes, rubbing her belly and head, letting her calm down while she generally began to get up, sniff around, and take in the fact that although there was so much going on around her, she didn't necessarily have to be terrified.

After a few minutes, she got up and began walking toward the park, her owner in tow. "Wow" he said, surprised at her rather immediate personality change... "Sometimes, New York City is like that", I replied, "you just have to take a few deep breaths and get a grip on it before happily being on your way".

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