People-watching

It's true what they say: With a dog, you are forced to take walks. Every day, I take two long walks with the dog: once in the morning, and once in the afternoon. I also take him out for shorter walks around the block during lunch, and then again before bedtime. All in all, we spend a good two hours every day walking. I now tend to enjoy and look forward to these walks as my daily exercise, so in the end, I don't actually know if I'm the dog's personal trainer, or if he is mine.

On these walks – where I am not purposely going from A to B but rather meandering wherever my own fancy or my dog's nose take us – I get to see the city from a casual observer's eye. Naturally, our walks occur at certain times before and after work. And after a time, it struck me how not only my dog and I keep to a schedule, but how everybody in the city does.

At the first floor of a corner apartment building, a man watches TV every day at 6 AM, but he always does so standing up beside his dining table. I smile to myself every time I see his head: "There he is again watching TV standing up right there!". In the next neighborhood, a woman always turns at the same street every morning on the way to her bus stop. Despite grid streets, I know where she will be turning. At around 6:30, it's time for a man with a cement company van to go work. I can always tell it's his vehicle approaching since I hear the loud rock music from inside his car, before I even see the van! People say that dogs are creatures of habit, but maybe that just reveals that we are unknowing of most of our own routines as humans.

Even though we often never say a word to each other, I also feel an affinity with the other people walking their dogs; they too, are bound by office hour constraints and use their free time to exercise their dog and/or make them go to the toilet. Owning a dog has made me realize how many dogs actually live around this neighborhood, which I never really had a reason to care about before. It is at the last walk of the evening, about 9-10 PM, that I feel most kinship with the Dogfolk. All half-tired, we all wish for a peaceful evening and weave our way around the park trying to avoid each other, lest our dogs become agitated and excitable around other dogs.

I tend to see the same persons walking their dogs during my walks, that I begin to recognize them and their mannerisms. Surely, they look at me and think (like many do, even when I didn't have a dog): "There goes that girl again, who walks without swinging her arms!".

I have begun to give the dog-walkers secret nicknames. There is "Pulse watch girl". She walks like she is in a big hurry, you can't tell at first that she is actually walking her dog. The dog is trailing behind on a long retractable line, trying to keep up with her. Pulse watch girl is, indeed, very set on power walking. When her dog stops to sniff (which she occasionally, reluctantly, lets him do), she jogs in place – thus my theory that she has a pulse watch.

There is also "Flashlight man". He is long and has a young German shepherd. Like me, he intersperses play into dog walks. In these dark winter mornings, he is armed with both a head lamp and a flashlight. Their play consists of making the German shepherd chase the flashlight light on the ground, as a cat owner would play with a cat using a laser pointer. Secretly, I study Flashlight man and his dog to see who is more successful between us at training our dog not to pull on the leash. Secretly, I think I am winning.

A mystery among the Dogfolk is "Coughing woman". She seems to have a well-mannered dog and they are dressed in the same blue-and-yellow colors. She takes mostly the same route around the park – only paved walks, never on grass to explore the bushes – and she looks very purposeful. I call her "Coughing woman" because strangely, she seems to communicate with her dog (or to other dog walkers?) using deep-sounding coughs. They are never a series of coughs, but just one loud expectorating cough, which sounds like a heavy book being suddenly closed. If she is behind me and about to overtake, she coughs. When we are approaching and I think she wants to signal that she wants distance from her dog, she coughs. But even when her dog is sniffing at something and she wants to move forward, she coughs. Who knows if I will ever get the secret meaning of these coughs.

Finally, I also get to observe other kinds of people in my walk, that I would probably never have bothered to look at if I were walking with a goal to get somewhere. Every morning, there is a woman who walks a park street towards town. She is well-wrapped in clothes (as if cold), and is always armed with a big full bag and rolling a trolley behind her. I wonder if she is homeless, where she walked from and where she is walking to. One morning, I thought of passing nearby and just tell her I see her every morning and ask her about herself. But I changed my mind, as I wondered what I would do with the eventual information she was going to share. Today, I also saw a man walking a path. Strangely, when he thought nobody was looking, he made a U-turn into some trees and hid himself behind a pile of gravel. In the dark morning, I wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for the small reflector on his jacket. Discreetly, I tried to walk the dog nearer the dense trees. I don't know why I did. I guess one gets a sense of confidence walking around in the dark with a big dog. I was also curious. But as I got nearer, and the figure (or rather his reflector) had not moved, I retreated back to the path. Who knows what I would find out. Maybe it wasn't worth my curiosity. Or maybe he was just peeing in a discrete place. Same same - sometimes it is better to people watch from a distance.