The Dog Blog with Kathryn Socie

Go Ahead Ask, and Take Toto Too

By Kathryn Socie, 6-27-08

Are you single and living in Missoula?  Got a dog?  Chances are you’ve been on the safe date.  When someone says to you, “Hey, want to get the dogs out on Water Works sometime this week?” odds are you’re being hit on.  It seems benign, rather just-friendly even, but it’s probably a date.  In a town where 75% of the single population is dogged, it is the perfect way to launch love, or at least explore the potential. And how ideal?  No pressure to find a topic of conversation (hello, dogs!), no worrying about who picks up the check, and if it feels a little awkward it’s over rather quickly and your dog had a good romp, so all is not lost.

By safe I don’t mean it in the weeding out Ted Bundy sort of way. Rather, if things go nowhere, egos emerge from a shared dog-walk unscathed, very unlike sharing a meal for whatever reason.  Perhaps all survive because there’s no money involved, or perhaps because the asker can hide behind the rather transparent guise of it not really being a date. But, somehow, three weeks after the fact, that person who pitched the idea still interacts normally with the pitchee. Go figure. 

The dog-walk safe date is definitely a Missoula thing.  You hear it all the time.  Recently, while strategizing a set-up with a group of friends we had a brainstorming session in which all the usual scenarios were offered.  Somebody has a potluck and invites both parties—nixed for the distinct possibility of a no show.  A couple, mutual friends of both parties, invites them over for dinner- nixed for being too staged.  One woman’s husband asked: “Can’t she just call him?” nixed for lacking all creativity.  Finally I asked “Does he have a dog?” A safe date was in order.

Chicago, New York, San Francisco are all hip dogged metropolises, but none of my sources of information on life outside the Montana border have reported such a dating culture.  I’m told a dearth of open space and stringent leash laws contribute to keeping the dog on the periphery of an emerging personal life.  According to one source, dog parks are a great place to meet people, but that a date involving a dog activity would never be proposed. 

One New Yorker asked: “What would we actually do, walk down the street together toting our Chihuahuas in stylish bags? How is that a date?”

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