Feature Article |
How Rover Took Over
By Michael Schaffer
IF THE EPICENTER OF UPSCALE PHILADELPHIA is Rittenhouse Square, the epicenter of DIPPie Philadelphia lies just a few blocks east, in that dog run at Schuylkill River Park. The fenced-in space, hard by the CSX rails at the park’s edge, is hardly ornate (although it’s hard not to adore the park’s ornamental fire hydrant, the better for the pups to pee on). But what it lacks in boulevards and statues, it makes up in people.
“This is the most regular social experience of my life,” says Nicole Rodgers, a graduate student who has walked her “supermutt,” Clementine, at the park for three years. “I could write an entire ethnography on the people here.” She describes a complex social hierarchy involving dog-walkers, dog owners, the after-work group, the daytime group, the folks who go to the monthly pug meet-up, and even weekend interlopers. “People always know who isn’t a regular,” she says. The local pups avoid weekends, when the run is full of non-neighborhood dogs.
“Oh yeah, we’ve had romances, a couple of weddings,” says Arnie Zacharias, a dog-walker who arrives holding leashes for five different dogs and wearing a t-shirt that reads “I’d rather be line-dancing.” By virtue of a job that takes him into dozens of houses around the neighborhood, Zacharias is privy to all sorts of gossip. But all he’ll dish about are the dogs. “That one’s a poo-eater, and so is that one.”
Of course, there are parks full of dog-walking regulars all over town, small oases of ritualized daily conversations between people who would otherwise be strangers. Whiting, who can frequently be found in the park teaching new generations of clients her secrets of dog-walking, or the come-when-called, or the old sit-and-stay, or other skills that have only just become professionalized, says the intensely social nature of the human interactions in the park, and the resulting anxieties about everything from misbehavior to poor grooming to subpar nutrition, actually drive a lot of the local pet industry’s business.
“When the dog’s misbehaving in the park, that’s socially disastrous,” she says. “When people feel like they’re being scrutinized by their peers, that can be a big problem.”
In other words: Bring on the training — and the sweaters, and the mango-scented shampoo, and the dog-walking lessons, too. The DIPPies are watching. And so you’d better keep up with Fido.
Michael Schaffer is working on a book about pets and consumerism.
Comments on this story? Please send them to us.
“This is the most regular social experience of my life,” says Nicole Rodgers, a graduate student who has walked her “supermutt,” Clementine, at the park for three years. “I could write an entire ethnography on the people here.” She describes a complex social hierarchy involving dog-walkers, dog owners, the after-work group, the daytime group, the folks who go to the monthly pug meet-up, and even weekend interlopers. “People always know who isn’t a regular,” she says. The local pups avoid weekends, when the run is full of non-neighborhood dogs.
“Oh yeah, we’ve had romances, a couple of weddings,” says Arnie Zacharias, a dog-walker who arrives holding leashes for five different dogs and wearing a t-shirt that reads “I’d rather be line-dancing.” By virtue of a job that takes him into dozens of houses around the neighborhood, Zacharias is privy to all sorts of gossip. But all he’ll dish about are the dogs. “That one’s a poo-eater, and so is that one.”
Of course, there are parks full of dog-walking regulars all over town, small oases of ritualized daily conversations between people who would otherwise be strangers. Whiting, who can frequently be found in the park teaching new generations of clients her secrets of dog-walking, or the come-when-called, or the old sit-and-stay, or other skills that have only just become professionalized, says the intensely social nature of the human interactions in the park, and the resulting anxieties about everything from misbehavior to poor grooming to subpar nutrition, actually drive a lot of the local pet industry’s business.
“When the dog’s misbehaving in the park, that’s socially disastrous,” she says. “When people feel like they’re being scrutinized by their peers, that can be a big problem.”
In other words: Bring on the training — and the sweaters, and the mango-scented shampoo, and the dog-walking lessons, too. The DIPPies are watching. And so you’d better keep up with Fido.
Michael Schaffer is working on a book about pets and consumerism.
Comments on this story? Please send them to us.
Originally published in Philadelphia magazine, July 2007
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