He made tails wag: A big-hearted man will be greatly missed by dogs and people alike

My dog is always willing to pause our walks when someone wants to visit.

But as much as Jack enjoys being petted, he loves walking even more, so he almost always plays it cool, stopping just long enough for a few quick pats and then stretching out his leash to get back on the move as soon as good manners permit.

I can’t blame him. While he gets plenty of petting at our house, he feels that the place is embarrassingly short on the sort of stinky hydrants, trees and fences that he only gets to savor on walks.

But Jack always dropped his cool act as soon as he caught sight of Ralph at our neighborhood park. I could tell the second he spotted Ralph, usually when we were still across the lake we circle most mornings, because his stride suddenly got wildly inefficient. It’s hard for a dog to move forward when his tail wags hard enough to set his entire back half skidding right and left.

Ralph was the only person for whom Jack would happily swap a long walk for a leisurely visit.

For a long time, I thought Jack just liked the treats Ralph carried. Jack only gets one treat at a time at home. Ralph, though, was like an indulgent grandpa. He’d hand Jack a snack, spend a little time petting and talking to him, and then ask, “Do you want another one?”

Jack always wanted another one, and Ralph was always happy to spoil him.

We ran into Ralph at the park without any treats a couple of times, on mornings when the weather was so miserable that he figured there wouldn’t be any dogs outside to give them to. Ralph apologized to Jack on those encounters, but Jack didn’t seem to mind. His tail stayed dialed to full wag and he was as reluctant as ever to move on after Ralph finished petting and chatting to him.

It wasn’t the treats that mattered, Jack knew. What mattered were the messages Ralph was conveying through them.

There’s not a lot of time for strangers to negotiate inter-species communication when they meet a new dog at the park, but Ralph had a shortcut. He’d hand out one treat to say, “Hi,” and the second one to say, “Stop and visit a while.” At least that’s how Jack responded to them, and after a while he understood Ralph just fine even on the freezing mornings when there were no treats.

The real treat was the friendship that powered Jack’s tail with some extra wag long after we resumed our walk and left Ralph behind at the park.

Ralph was as good at casting wide the quilt of friendship as he was at handing out snacks.

There’s one dog we see often at the park who, for no reason that I can fathom, Jack couldn’t stand. She’s noble-looking, big and chestnut brown, maybe a Labrador. Her owner and I moved into the grass with the sidewalk between us every time we passed each other to avoid a dogfight.

So I was curious what would happen one morning not long ago when I spotted Ralph up ahead petting Jack’s nemesis. Jack looked more and more uneasy as we approached, until Ralph called him over and introduced the dogs.

I was surprised to see them cautiously sidle up to each other, snout to tail, and sniff for a long time without so much as a growl. They both understood Ralph’s invitation to stop and visit a while.

Maybe they even understood his encouragement to make a new friend who could put some extra wag in their tail the next time they ran into each other at the park. I hope so. All the morning walkers at South Lake Park, canine and human, need something to pull us through the grief of learning that Ralph Emery Morris passed away this month at the age of 71.

A memorial to him at the park, one of several put up by people whose mornings he brightened, says that he called himself the Dog Whisperer and that he “always had treats for each furry friend.”

Ralph had treats for those of us who aren’t so furry, too. When he wasn’t visiting with a dog, he spent mornings hauling a bucket and a net around the park to clear trash from the ground and the lake. While his canine neighbors got snacks, we humans got a clean place to walk and play and warm each other’s days with a friendly “good morning.”

I’ve been tearing up when I remember Ralph’s big smile and the short chats we shared as he petted Jack. It’s powerfully bittersweet to walk past the memorials with pictures that show him smiling beside some of the dogs he loved.

But warmth from the friendliness Ralph spread is powerful, too. I still feel it in the brighter morning when Jack and I leave the park, and I think I still see it giving a boost to Jack’s wagging tail.

Richard Espinoza is a former editor of the Johnson County Neighborhood News. You can reach him at respinozakc@yahoo.com. And follow him on Twitter at @respinozakc.