Yesterday I took Grizz-Bang with me to the Alzheimer's walk. I'm always the first there, 7:00am, setting up tables in before dawn. By 9:00am there were over 500 people there, and by the time the walk started at 10:00, well over 1,000 people. Several dogs, too. The DJ that comes every year to do a live remote used to do everything possible to keep dogs away from events like this. Five years ago, he actually went to city council and had dogs banned from walks within the city, telling them that although it's nice that people want to bring their dogs, there's always some idiot (meaning me) that would bring an aggressive dog like a Rottweiler to one of these events. Fine, I moved the walk to outside city limits, another park. It's become even more popular. Anyway, this same DJ approached me yesterday and stuck his microphone in my face, asking me about Grizz and my other Rotties. He said he remembers me bringing 2 at a time and said that he thought it was crazy, but that he also remembered them behaving very well. He asked several questions about why these dogs end up in shelters and whether they're safe to adopt. About 5 minutes of free airtime that I never would have expected. At the end, he was petting Grizz-Bang and said, "That's my way of apologizing for being such a jerk when I didn't know what I was talking about".
The walk went well, Grizz-Bang had a blast. He met new people, new dogs, and had children around him most of the time, which made him so very happy!