Have you had a look on the Internet lately about the procedure needed to arrange a playdate with your children’s friends? After the logistical difficulty of actually arranging a suitable time for the social meet up you also need to ensure the other child does not have any food sensitivities or allergies, take into account any religious differences, make sure the children have suitable rest time and finally have “free-form, open-ended activities available for a play date”. This sounds like a lot of effort and might explain why we never bothered socializing our children when they were younger and kept them locked in a cage.

Our children are now teenagers; we’ve given up on their future and have moved onto the dog. The way I see it if we stuff this one up the dog cannot testify against us in court unlike the kids might.

We arranged a date for Storm over the weekend. Unlike a human play date it was much easer to arrange, just a quick message via Facebook then we turned up on their doorstop a couple of days later. Of course Storm didn’t bother arranging anything, he just spent the time chasing a half eaten tennis ball across the lounge and chewing the tags off his toys while we made the calls.

Dogs do prearranged meeting differently than humans. When two children meet they are a little standoffish for a while, and hide behind their parents until they decide that their new friend is not a serial killer. Dogs try and kill each other. I don’t think they were actually trying to commit murder but if you walked in on their meeting you’d think something violent and wrong was occurring and it would be very difficult to explain their motives to a judge.

Storm’s new friends Mr. Wilson and Benson spent the next thirty minutes play fighting in the back yard. They didn’t hold a grudge when the other dog got the upper hand for a few minutes, they just waited until they could exact revenge and take down their enemy in a swift planned attack. In much the same way a Football game is played, the final score was irrelevant, the fight was all that matters and the eventual winner was not important.

If you have personal space issues when you are standing in someone’s backyard while three dogs are play fighting then things will not end well. We were standing around having a conversation while watching and suddenly a strange creature with twelve legs, three heads and varying shades of yellow fur starting tumbling towards me.

My fight or flight instinct decided to do neither and I just stepped back slightly and waited for the impact. I managed to do the backwards-fall-gracefully-without-actually-fallling-over dance that is common when this situation arises and stabled myself before they moved their fight elsewhere. They were indifferent to the carnage they had caused and continued their rampage in the backyard.

This story did end well, our hosts gave us cake.

Although i never did ask what religion Mr Wilson and Benson are, I didn’t want Storm to do anything culturally insensitive and apart from relieving himself on their backyard I don’t think he did.