Several years ago a man tried to rob Danny and I while we walked our weimaraner  'Reeva'  thru a city park. Here is the story I wrote to send to our friends after the incident occured.... its a cute story but don't rely on your weimaraners to support you in the 'scam'.

By the way....thats 'Reeva' relaxing by the pool above.


(winter 2002) - This morning I have a brave story to tell you.

Last night Danny and I were doing our nightly walk and because we had come home from work, much later than usual, we decided to take our dog ( Reeva – Oska’s mother) and walk down to Beaumont Street in Hamilton and get a take away Kebab.

We changed into our trakie dackkies divested ourselves of watches, jewellery, wallets and other valuables etc and collected the dog, Danny grabbed a $20 note to buy the Kebabs and we started our walk. Helen you will know the route well ( because we have done it with you many times), except for the slight diversion to the Kebab restaurant.

Nothing out of the usual happened on the walk and we ordered kebabs and ate them while watching the busy parade of people on Beaumont Street.

After finishing our meal we headed off and picked up our normal walking route. Part of getting back to that  route meant that we had to cross an isolated park called ‘Gregson Park’ in Hamilton. 

When we got to the park I let 'Reeva' off the lead and we walked past a rose garden almost bereft of both leaves and flowers, being the middle of winter it looked like a shimmery ghost land in the moonlight.

We were both chatting away about the days events engrossed in each others conversations when suddenly we entered a particularly dark eerie part of the park. Without warning this huge guy at least 6’6” (well maybe a slight embellishment) appeared out of the shadows and demanded that we hand over all of our valuables and wallets immediately.

I spun around to face him and a terrible though went through my mind. Gees I don’t have anything of value except my Calvin Cline underpants ($48 pair) which I immediately started removing as I had no wallet, coin or watches etc to hand over. ( oops stop that embellishment Jim)

Danny on the other hand immediately swung around and yelled forcefully ( I didn’t know he had it in him, you should have heard that THUNDEROUS voice come out of his throat…turned me to jelly) at the guy and told him to ‘freeze on the spot’. 

From the corner of his eye Danny had seen little miss ‘Reeva’ the very happy go lucky Weimaraner running back to us. Taking the advantage Danny yelled at the guy and told him that he only had to give the command to our dog Reeva and she would tear him apart, limb to limb. (well being Reevas official owner I was impressed and amused by his improvisation because I knew she wouldn’t live up to his claim)

The guy froze on the spot, Looking at both of us and the dog running headlong in his direction. At that point I knew we had him and I started to pull my Calvin Cline Y fronts back up (remember that is an embellishment).

We started negotiating with the potential robber while all the time…. Darn ‘Reeva’ ( the dog) not playing her part well enough started sniffing the guy, rubbing on his legs begging for a scratch behind the ear.


We asked the burly robber why he was trying to scare and steal from people in the park and told him that it was the wrong thing to do and that he could end up getting hurt or worse spending  a stint in gaol. He said he had no money for food. Danny told him to get a decent job or go register to go on the dole or to call a refuge centre instead of trying to rob people in the park and we told him if we saw him again in the park that next time we would not hold the dog back, That’s a joke I thought to myself.  and....of course……’Reeva’ starts Guard dog school next week as a consequence.

Shaken but not overcome we returned to our walk, me adjusting my underpants into a more comfortable position, at one stage I had thought I might have to surrender them as my most valuable possession.

As we walked further I said to Danny that I didn’t feel 100% OK about letting him go because had it been a woman ( my mother for example ) or an older person then they would have surrendered both their valuables and their underpants without hesitation and the whole thing would have been more traumatic.

So like the good little citizens that we are and thank goodness Danny had his mobile phone he called the triple zero emergency phone line and asked to be connected to the local police station……. but just as they were connecting Danny to the local police his low battery warning started sounding. He only had time to blurt out….can you believe this……”there is a man asking for money in a park at Hamilton” and then the battery went dead.

I said to him it’s not a crime to ‘ask’ for money in a park and the police won’t know that it’s a robber we are reporting …anyway it was the best we could do before his battery went dead.

We both laughed about the incident and kept walking.

Danny looked at me and asked the BIG QUESTION “if you had told Reeva to attack would she”? Chuckle chuckle……I ask you now…. can you imagine Reeva attacking on command and tearing a stranger apart?

I still felt uneasy that we had just let this guy leave with a lecture and no attempt to apprehend him and I kept thinking how I would feel if it had been my mother walking thru the park…..and……. just then a police vehicle came around the corner so I ran out onto the road and flagged them down and we told them what had happened in the park.

We recounted the story (with the odd embellishment…as you do)

The police officers took all of our details, phones no’s addresses etc… I felt like the criminal by the time they finished…they even asked what colour my underpants were? ….. and I said they were white when it all started but I would have to get home into the light to check their current colour …… after all it was quite a fright.

Fortunately when I got home they were still white and thank got I took mums advise as a child and had clean ones on with no holes.

We got home had a shower, recounted our bravery yet again, speculated about whether we should nominate ourselves for recipients of the next police bravery awards medals.

Having safely settled into bed to watch a little tellie before nodding off the phone rang and it was police constable Mark Williams calling to inform us that our HUGE perpetrator friend in the park had just been apprehended, you guessed it, in the same part of the park. Even after our scolding and lecture there he was trying his dirty tricks out on another man and then robbing two women.

So much for our sermon!

We were never the less pleased that our actions had contributed to him being apprehended so promptly.

Moral of the story, if you are wearing valuable underpants make sure they are always clean and have no holes AND more importantly don’t rely on the Weimaraner to uphold their end of the scam!

Till the next adventure 

Moral of the story - Weimaraners don't attack on command!