Dog Walks

One of our routes:

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It seems funny to think but I know my neighborhood, such as I know it, through my dog. Carol and I walk Rita, a black standard poodle, three times a day, and since we like to walk, we see a good bit of Montford and beyond.

One of our walks is indicated on the map above. But there are dozens. One takes us south to the community center, with its grassy lawn and ball field and outdoor amphitheater. Another takes us along Cumberland toward town, left on Starnes (where we lived twenty-six years ago) then back along Flint. Another is over to the university, via Reid Creek, back through what we call the “urban forest” – wooded university property across Weaver Boulevard from campus – to West, and then down to Broadway and home. A map of this walk follow the text below.

I say it seems funny that Rita is so central to knowing our neighborhood. I’m not sure why, but it is. Perhaps it is funny that more than half the people we know here we know because of a dog.

She is an extroverted poodle, eager to meet all friendly people and dogs, the more the better. So we meet them. And since anyone who knows dogs knows that a tired dog is a happy dog, we are eager to let her play with other dogs. They tire each other out faster than we can walking them.

There are many people whose names I don’t know but whose dogs’ names I do know. But I know these people as the “mother” or “father” or “owner” of so-and-so dog. At least I know them a little, know them to wave and to ask about their dogs. If not for Rita, most of them would be strangers.

It makes me wonder how people get to know each other. So many drive to work and play – there simply aren’t many reasons, besides walking dogs, to get to know neighbors.

We know our immediate neighbors: Fran to our left and Joy and her kids to the right, the McMahans across the street, Lenora and Steve also across the street. These people we know before Rita. We know Pamela, a door down to the right, and Rebecca (I think that’s her name) in the Tudor house beside Lenora and Steve, but I think we know them better because of our dogs. Harold lives at the corner of Birch, Walter around the corner on Birch – and we knew them before Rita. Cecil down Pearson with his dog Laddy, and Donna next door with her dog Woofer, we know better for Rita. Then there are the Richardson-Dillingham’s at the Pearson bend, the Merrills along Danville – and most occasions we’ve had to talk with them have been over the dog. We know more people in Montford north, and I’d venture that’s because we walk the dog that way more than we walk her south.

Perhaps if we had children we would know our neighbors as well or better, but we’d probably know different neighbors. Neighbors with like-aged kids.

It makes me realize that people know people – neighbors, colleagues, friends, relatives, no matter – through activities and intermediaries.

A person walking down the street aiming to have a conversation, just like that, would, frankly, be met with a certain amount of suspicion. Not sure I’m proud of that fact, but I believe it’s true. The same person at the other end of a leash or stroller becomes a certain sort of identity. I can “identify” them, even if I do not know them, and because of the leash or stroller feel, however rightly or wrongly, that I “know” something about them. That something serves as the basis of at least an initial engagement.

Similarly, places – or should I say “spaces” – are not significant in themselves but as arenas for the activities that take place in and around them. Or are associated with them. Or are passed through on the way to other arenas with social significance.

Places are social arenas. Their meaning (at least, I can say, the meaning of Montford, my neighborhood, to me) is predicated on social relations built up in them, and these social relations are, it seems, predicated on activities, practices, rituals, routines. People don’t form relations with each other out of nothing: they relate to each other within activities.

Perhaps I am speaking too generally. Certainly this is my experience – I get to know other people over our dogs, on a walk, sharing a meal, discussing a problem, watching a game, raving about a book or movie. But I don’t think I’m so different. It is difficult to be social without something in our hand, some pretext.
City-Forest Walk

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