The Silver Spring Penguin

It’s official: Silver Spring has gone to the dogs. And some people like it that way.

Outside one apartment building at The Blairs, dog owners Michelle and Brian were grateful for the complex’s new fenced-in dog park off Eastern Avenue. Before property managers opened the pooch play area last week, the couple (who did not give their last name) had to schlep their two dogs to a park in Wheaton for off-leash action.

“We used to have a Firenza,” Brian told The Penguin. But packing the two dogs — Gypsy, a frisky Australian shepherd/Dalmatian mix; and Suki, a towering Great Dane — into the subcompact for a trip to Wheaton was not working.

“We had to get a Honda Pilot when we got Suki,” Brian said. “This dog was getting expensive!”

On occasion, Brian and Michelle would walk the dogs to a nearby apartment complex with green space, but that only worked in a pinch, Michelle said. Otherwise, the dogs were confined to a sofa inside the couple’s two-bedroom apartment.

But on Sunday morning, four walls faded in the wide, grassy space beneath a shade tree at The Blairs dog park. Great Dane Suki leaped effortlessly from one end of the park to the other, while mixed breed Gypsy trotted after her house mate.

While the neighborhood’s larger breeds enjoyed the room to roam, one smaller dog seemed to appreciate his chance to hang with the big boys. Casey, a 7-inch-tall, 2-foot-long Dachshund, spent most of Sunday morning resting beneath a bench, the park’s only human amenity.

But when Gypsy and Suki got rowdy with a Siberian husky and a yellow Lab, Casey showed them all who was boss. Casey’s tiny legs puttered him to the scene of the action, and as he craned his neck upward, he snapped the big dogs to attention with a loud, sharp bark.

His crowd-control task complete, Casey puttered back to his cool spot beneath the bench.

Meanwhile, at downtown’s Turf, there were plenty of pooches convening for Friday’s “Sign of the Times” celebration. Three massive German shepherds parked their haunches at the corner of Ellsworth Drive and Fenton Street while their owners chatted. And on the green, three identical pugs tangled their leashes and mugged for cameras.

Yep, this town has definitely gone to the dogs.

Photos by Ron Pace/SSP.