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Comment by tasty_freeze | Hacker News Reader

We got a small, older dog a couple years ago, mostly for my wife. She has health issues and can't walk the dog, so it fell on me. At first I was kind of resentful. The dog is ponderous and doesn't really take direction much, and I'm way too short on free time.

Well, I've lived in the neighborhood for ten years and only when I started walking the dog did I start meeting a bunch of people in the neighborhood. I still would like an extra 30 minutes of free time a day, but my life is a lot richer socially.

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When I got a dog, it also fell on me to walk her. When we had a storm a while back, I realized that I only knew the dogs’ names and where they lived.

“Yeah, Fido’s house got tore up pretty bad”. Didn’t know the owner’s name :)

I was a dog park regular at a few parks over course of a few years, as were several others so I met and befriended a lot of people but never knew any names other than dog names. Although I recall exchanging and promptly forgetting a few peoples names

Similar line of thought, I never really met any neighbors but I know all of the right places to pee around the neighborhood.

Walking the dog is sort of the meat space version of having an article to discuss online. It facilitates having a thing to talk about, to politely bond over without being overly personal, an excuse for the interaction so you don't sound like a creepy stalker for talking to a stranger for no reason.

You're sort of forced into it too. The only thing more awkward than striking up conversation with a stranger is not striking up a conversation while your dogs are busy sniffing eachothers butts.

This was me with my youngest child, who had croup and I ended up walking her around the block quite frequently at night, especially in the colder months. We got to know so many people and so much about what was going on.

That was COVID for me. My front porch was and still is my office, and I got to know most of my neighbors and all of the gossip.

Smokers talk about having a similar social effect occur when chatting during a smoke break.

It's one of the reasons smoking is hard to quit for some, especially in highly populated areas.

Definitely.

I used to smoke.

It was the easiest way to merge into a group of people. Walk up, ask for a lighter. You are now part of the circle.

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