Sunday vignettes.

One. You know you love your dog when it feels like 42 degrees out, with gusty winds of 20 mph, and you bundle yourself up, and her, and still take her to Hillside, because you know she'll love it and because you know, as she does not, that the long stretch of winter is coming and with it the end to the carefree days of dogparking.

Two. You are walking your dog home down Willow Street. It is blustery and the street has not been swept and there are deep drifts of leaves, through which your dog plunges mightily and with great cheer. You come up on two things at once: another fellow walking his dog and four people doing some sort of photo shoot. It's a couple posing, very engagement-style, with the fall leaves and the view of Manhattan off to the left; the other two people are the photographer and the person to direct traffic around the shot. So, okay. Look. It's cold and windy and you're mightily distracted by the barking and play-lunging your dog is doing in the direction of the other dog, but you swear that the man of the couple is Mr. Big/Chris Noth. Everyone is staring at you and your play-rabid dog while you attempt to cross the street. You have very quick fantasies of actually meeting Chris Noth, then realize your fantasies wouldn't really be that fun in real life, because you could only meet the actor, not the character. You are disappointed. But you decide to take one last look at the scene--the leaves, the cold, the posing couple--try to imagine the shot that will come out of the scene you just walked by. Yes, you turn for another glimpse, and when you turn back facing forward, you walk smack into a pole. This really happens to you.

Three. You are almost home, almostalmost. You are walking past Pierrepont, your dog trying stubbornly to eat any scrap of anything on the street and you trying stubbornly not to let her. All of a sudden, past you runs a beautiful faun-and-white colored pit mix. She has an ear-to-ear grin, and this sort of gorgeous, loping, fast yet carefree gallop to her. What is wrong with this scene is that she is (a) not attached to a leash, (b) not followed closely by an owner, (c) obviously, not at a dog park with fences, and (d) not apparently too concerned with traffic. You are struck dumb. You want to stop her, but she is gone, she is already two blocks away. You think of what you could have done: tried to lure her with hot dogs, tried to grab her collar, something. You worry how far she will get with that gorgeous loping run and how fast she will get there. You know that if your dog ever got loose, you'd lose her just as quick and you'd hope that passersby would think faster on their feet, grab her, hold her, cage that which is too carefree.