Billy the golden retriever wonders whether his owner really just tossed his frisbee into the lake again.
By James Kinneen
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Given the number of cyclists on the road Sunday afternoon, it has to be a matter of time before Dover produces a Tour de France champion. There wasn’t a street that didn’t have at least one person in full regalia riding a touring bike (not a beach cruiser or BMX) on it. Per capita, on Saturday, Dover had to have had the most people on bicycles of any city in the world - except for in those countries where people bike everywhere to cut carbon emission, reduce air pollution, become less dependent on foreign oil and limit traffic congestion. You know, except those ones.
While the car-versus-cyclist fight has gone on for years, as I made my way to Channing Pond, I didn’t see any sign of it. Nobody seems to be in a rush to go anywhere, so I guess being stuck waiting to pass a cyclist isn't the end of the world.
When I arrived at the pond, there were two guys playing fetch with their dog. Unlike my previous social distance hikes through forest trails, my Channing Pond visit allowed me to be in direct sunlight, which was great, because it kept bugs away and kept my feet mud-free.
So it wasn’t surprising that other people were there.
They were packing up their things when I asked if I could take some pictures of the dog jumping in the water for Hometown Weekly. They enthusiastically said yes, then tried to coax the dog to fetch a frisbee in the pond, then do the "jump up on your chest to get the frisbee you’re holding above your head" move one might see on ESPN dog challenges.
The problem was, Billy, the twelve-year-old golden retriever, was dog tired.
Billy, 89 in dog years according the chart I found online, had just spent the last couple of hours sprinting around the park, swimming in the water, and walking through thick pond muck, only for me to show up right when it was clear he had enough. Billy was exhausted. Billy had no desire to play fetch. Billy didn’t care about my article.
Thus, Billy’s two owners and I shared a very awkward couple of minutes, during which they tried to get Billy excited with a whole lot of “come on boy,” and “you want the frisbee? You want the frisbees?” as I stared through my camera lens at the canine equivalent of Danny Glover’s character in “Lethal Weapon.” Or, the canine equivalent Danny Glover himself in “Lethal Weapon 5.”
Eventually, Billy meandered into the water to slowly fetch out a frisbee they had launched into the pond and I snapped away.
As Billy’s owners got in their cars and the hound labored behind, I headed to the other side of the pond to see what was around. One of the things you notice at Channing Pond is all the noise. Whatever type of birds or insects are in the wetlands around the pond, they produce a near constant buzz, once you get far enough away from the street, until it the noise is drowned out by the sound of running water near the end of where one can walk.
There are many animals on those shores. During my walk, I saw a bullfrog on the water's edge, a couple of crayfish in the mud offshore, a ton of birds - red-winged blackbirds, robins, chickadees - and one coiled black snake.
I probably could have seen many more animals, had I not seen that snake. I hate snakes, and I knew that no matter what happened, Billy wasn’t going to save me from it.
One of the more disheartening things I saw all over the pond was a profusion of fishing remnants. There were bobbers in the shallows, and hooks and lures that had been abandoned on reeds. Obviously, the annual youth fishing derby is a great event, but I would like to see the town have a magnet fishing derby, as well, to deal with how much old tackle must be in the pond. Magnet fishing (wherein one throws a giant magnet, attached to a rope, into a lake and pulls it back to shore to see what stuck to it) is a big thing on YouTube; perhaps if you showed kids a highlight reel of magnet fishermen’s finds, you could motivate them to try it themselves.
“Sure, there might be a pair of Confederate dueling pistols in Channing Pond, too. Who knows?”
Kidding aside, Channing Pond is a really nice place where you can experience the benefits of being deep in the woods - like seeing wildlife and enjoying the fresh air - without having to enter a dark forest and deal with mosquitoes and muddy trails.
