Step One: Get a dog.
Step Two: Walk the dog.
We moved in to this house 4.5 years ago. We immediately made friends with the across-the-road neighbours, whose kids are the same age as ours and go to the same school. We are casually friendly with the old guy to the left who lives with his mom and another couple across the road who recently started reproducing. That’s about it. They all seem friendly enough – they slow down when our kids are outside, at least – but we never end up doing more than nodding. Most of them aren’t around much, it seems.
Since I got Jasper and started walking him, I’ve had lovely chats with all sorts of people, and not just others out walking their dogs. Everyone we pass has to stop and meet Jasper, admire his handsomeness and tell me about the dogs they have, or their kids have. Suddenly, it is the friendliest neighbourhood.
Not only is Jasper leading me to meet all sorts of new people, he’s getting me out a lot more. For example, it used to be that after I picked up Boo from her all-day pre-school days at 3:30 (sometimes she goes half a day, sometimes all day), I’d just sit in the car with her for 20 minutes in the parking lot waiting for the older two to get out of school, knitting and reading or writing in my journal while she had a snack or played around.
Now, I bring Jasper (because he appears to hate being left alone worse than he hates the car. He’s getting used to the latter) and let Boo play on the play structure while I walk him around. Granted, that is only 20 minutes, but I find that sort of thing happening a lot, and it sure can’t be bad for me.
Daisy, our foster dog last summer, needed at least 2 hours of walks a day (she would have been happier with 3 or 4). I didn’t get as much work done as I wanted every day because of this, but I also lost 5 pounds and became part of the local ‘dog-and-human companion’ sub-culture that I had never experienced before. Then, as soon as Daisy went to her forever home, the that doggy sub-culture instantly vanished — it was like this magic world that you could only see if you had a dog. We miss Daisy, and we miss seeing our neighbourhood from a different perspective, but we don’t miss the 2+ hours of walks!
She was a Jack Russell, right? Those things have an insane amount of energy wrapped up in a tiny little dog. Two hours a day would kill me.
Yeah. Part JR as far as we could tell. She was totally placid at home, but you just *knew* she wanted to be outside looking for squirrels *all* the time.