Never heard of this article in The Times? What do you think? Have to confess that I have never heard of Henry Bird, or borrowmydoggy.com and I doubt very much we could do the same with our dogs (even if we wanted to) but I sort of like the idea and think it may be better that the service I see offered by many a dog walker i.e. a one on one relationship.
Original Article
It’s been incredibly quiet up here in Durham. Out of about 20,500 students, 1,209 (and counting) have tested positive for Covid-19. Everything is gradually moving fully online, so it’s a godsend to have Louis. A beautiful eight-month old French bulldog, he is proving to be an absolute lifeline. Taking him for his morning walk — an hour and a half up one length of the River Wear — we gallop across the playing fields and dart around woodland patches, coming to rest on a bench just past one of the college rowing clubs. From there you can see the cathedral and the castle in all their splendour. With Louis sitting calmly next to me, barking gently at the rowers that drift past, I feel immediately more calm, almost cleansed.
Last Wednesday an elderly couple with a doleful basset hound passed as we got up from the bench and engaged in polite conversation, as dog-owners do. “Oh, he’s beautiful!” they cooed. “Where did you get him from?”
“Honestly I couldn’t tell you,” I replied. “He’s not mine.”
At this point I should come clean. No, I have not started a new career as a dognapper, but it’s true that Louis is not my dog. Indeed, up until recently, the closest bond I’ve had with a hound is via the medium of Gardeners’ World, where my love for Monty Don’s Nellie knows no bounds. My three cats at home would suggest I am of a more feline persuasion, but spending time with Louis has made me empathise with words often attributed to Winston Churchill: “Dogs look up to us; cats look down on us.”
Louis actually belongs to Sofia, a lovely 34-year-old woman who works just around the corner from my flat. Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, when Louis would otherwise be sitting and howling impatiently in the hairdresser’s chair next to her, I come and wave through the window. I see Louis gently wag his tail against the leather and we go out for our stroll.
All of this is only possible thanks to the dog-sharing service Borrow My Doggy. It has 750,000 members across the UK and was founded in 2012 by Danish-born Rikke Rosenlund and has boomed since lockdown began. After all, with dog owners at home more, they don’t need dog walkers; suddenly the opportunity to walk a dog is in more demand, while the need to have them walked for you is waning. Over the phone Rosenlund tells me that “quite literally thousands more people are signing up every single week, borrowers and owners, across the whole country, and Ireland as well”.
Its mission is to connect dog owners with trusted locals who may not have a dog of their own, “people who may have that dog-shaped hole in their life”, as Rosenlund puts it. It may also prove to be a vital service to those who bought dogs at the height of lockdown. “In the last few months, since we’ve seen lots of people getting dogs, dogs which now need to socialise and mix with other dogs and other people, the number of owners signing up has really increased,” Rosenlund says. As a borrower, I am paying £12.99 a year for my subscription, while Sofia pays £44.99 as a dog-owner.
Whenever Sofia is too busy in the salon to entertain Louis, and if I have a spare hour or two in the morning (and right now, I do), I take him for a jaunt into Durham’s surrounding countryside. All in a Covid-secure way, of course: the website recommends washing all leads and collars, connecting with the owner over the phone before meeting and, of course, wearing masks during the dog handover.
When I signed up for Borrow My Doggy back in March, I had never downloaded Tinder. I’d never got the hang of modern dating apps. Yet it turns out that there’s much less pressure on swiping right when you’re doing so on a dog you’d like to walk. Originally, I joined with the free basic package, which means you can view the pictures of the dogs but not walk them. Granted, I could have just typed “dog” into Google and received a very similar result, but what’s done is done. At the time it suited me just fine; the website states that 98 per cent of users find that just looking at the dogs on the site puts them in a better mood.
Yet since moving back to university, just looking at pictures of admittedly beautiful dogs hasn’t been enough. According to the Durham University website, “The number of reported positive coronavirus cases in students and staff has been steady, with approximately 100-150 new reported cases each day.” Yes, of course, there are students here, as in every university, who are behaving selfishly and compromising the safety of their fellow students, staff members and the local population. Yet for the vast majority of us, doing everything in our power to stay safe, there is a distinct sense that Covid-19 is ticking us off one by one. After such a long period of time at home with family, I do feel somewhat isolated here. Yesterday I found a football downstairs in the communal hallway that I am dangerously close to taking a Sharpie to and calling Wilson. Looking ahead, the prime minister’s pledge that he will “get students home safely for Christmas” feels like a fairly distant dream.
As time has passed, I’ve come to rue what’s missing from the student experience: the lack of the energising morning walk to a lecture, or the friendly passing nod to that classmate it’s now too late to ask the name of. In its place, there’s now the strange feeling of having a seminar sitting at the foot of my bed three times a week.
Even before Covid-19, dog-walking was a successful remedy for struggling students across the UK. In my first year, the vice-principal of Grey College, which is just down the road from mine, would invite students to walk his greyhounds with him in the run-up to exam season. At Sussex University the dog-walking society quickly became its biggest club upon its founding, with more than 300 students signing up as a way to manage their mental health. At Cardiff and Chester, their student dog-walking groups have recently reconvened, with Covid safety measures in place, to help those students who are away from home for the first time in such unprecedented circumstances.
And it’s true: walking Louis every week is proving to be quite a tonic for everything that my student life was lacking because of Covid — be it social interaction, lack of physical activity or mutual motivation, Louis provides it all.
While friends are struck down with the now all too familiar dry cough, walking with Louis has been a way to avoid all talk of the pandemic. First, not only does Louis not demand any particularly highbrow conversation from me, but also coming across fellow dog-walkers is a joy. The delight of a quick greeting and not having to talk about anything except how majestic each other’s dog is. Even if it’s just for that one hour in the morning, I feel part of a community I’d never engaged with before.
Also, I make sure I dress for the part. I dig out my most “dad” jumper and put on my walking boots (although it was hard to give out a strong dog-owner vibe when, last week, Louis sent me careering into a deceptively deep pool of mud in front of a group of new freshers). This sensible outfit acts as a catalyst for the rest of the day, and I’ve found myself far more able to settle down to study after a morning’s exercise with Louis than I would were I still in my PJs.
In 2009, a study by Miho Nagasawa of Azabu University in Japan found that the level of oxytocin, a hormone that provides feelings of happiness and excitement, was heightened considerably after being around dogs. Walking with Louis means being able to see the world from his perspective (what ethologists call umwelt). Although he’s not quite White Fang, to see my surroundings as gleefully and eagerly as he does is a refreshing break from the grey aesthetic that we have grown used to in the past few months.
When I took Louis on his first walk, I sent Sofia a reassuring photo of him having a wonderful time barrelling into a pile of leaves. She replied, “You will be his new best friend.” Well, he might just be mine too.
borrowmydoggy.com