How My Dog Brought Me Back to the World of Human Connection
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Slowly but surely, Nick Duerden had cocooned himself away from human interaction and become increasingly isolated in middle age
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Walking his dog, Missy, changed everything
Dog walking in middle age has given me plenty of time for private contemplation. My iPhone battery is unreliable, and so podcasts have a habit of abruptly cutting out mid-walk. What else am I supposed to do, then, as the dog roams through the undergrowth, but think?
One of the more intriguing things I’ve come to recognise about myself of late is that social skills are like muscles: if you don’t use them, they atrophy, and waste away. My social life has dwindled these past few years, and I sometimes convince myself that I’ve lost the knack for it altogether. While I’ve been pleasantly relieved to learn that I can still talk to strangers in the park, and engage with them – as long as they come bearing a dog of their own – I’ve lost the ability to do so with anyone else for the simple sake of it. I no longer need small talk. The friendships I had in my teens and twenties, which I nurtured well into my thirties and beyond, have drifted mostly because I allowed them to. And whenever I did get back in touch with them, I learned that they too had allowed other friendships to drift.
‘It’s what we do,’ a fellow dog walker, tells me, adding, to remove ambiguity, ‘men, I mean.’
The last time I was properly socially active was during my daughters’ primary school years, where school-gate interaction was a requirement. There were summer barbecues and Christmas drinks with these strangers who had recently become friends, or at least friend-adjacent, and talk revolved around sport, and house prices, and holiday plans, but rarely went any deeper or more connective. They were the kind of conversations that could be readily interrupted because one of the children had tripped over, or lost their ball, or went suddenly and dramatically into anaphylactic shock, after which everyone was simply too tired to pick up the lost thread. They were relationships born out of convenience, and I appreciated them for what they were.
But, a while ago, without really noticing it, I think I must have decided that I’d met enough people in life already, and had had all my close friendships.
I was good at friendship once. A good listener, people would seek me out. I miss that, but I don’t miss the accompanying drama. There was always so much accompanying drama. Elena, my wife, worries for me, on my behalf. She does not approve of my increasing solitude, and thinks it’s damaging to exist within my own echo chamber. She argues that an exchange of ideas, and small talk too, is good for us, good for the soul. While I’ve retreated, she has gone out and established new social groups which she works hard at maintaining. She is a fully functioning member of the neighbourhood, and I admire her, and also envy her. But I also have no real desire to emulate her because I can’t, not any more.
It came as something of a surprise, then, to both of us, that, several years into first-time dog ownership, I now often return home from an afternoon’s walk with Missy having lost all track of time in pursuit of occasionally profound conversation with complete strangers.
‘It’s done you the world of good,’ she says. ‘I’m sure of it.’
Since we’ve had the dog, windows have opened into new worlds. I’ve met all sorts of people that I wouldn’t have met anywhere else but the dog park, the vast majority of them possessed of an innate generosity of spirit. It reminded me that we’ve more in common, and that human connection has a palpable value.
When I got ill a few years back – a post-viral health “thing” that had long since overstayed its welcome, and diminished my daily energy levels – I was told to slow down. ‘This may be your problem,’ one of many doctors told me. ‘You never did slow down, you just kept going.’ And so I stayed home until, five years into this new reality, we got the dog. The dog, I was told, would get me away from work, and screens, and I could do that mindful thing in nature that people keep talking about. I never saw Missy as a therapy aide, not at first. But this is what she became. For Elena, a burden has been lifted. She can send me out now, knowing I’ll be fine. In the park, I don’t actively seek out anyone’s company, but I find it nevertheless. And I certainly don’t ask obtrusive questions; rather, the conversation just seems to flow. The more meandering the walk, the more rambling the talk.
My wife was right. I’d been cocooning myself in, trapped by poor health within the four walls of home, like one of those pigeons that fly into a shopping mall and can’t find their way out again, condemned to panic-flutter from floor to floor against the backdrop of ever-changing scenery. Sometimes I wonder how I didn’t go mad, and then fear that perhaps I did and just don’t realise it. Either way, I’m back out in the world again now, in 45-minute chunks, admittedly, but meeting people with this new companion of mine who surprises me daily by following me dutifully, as if I were the master in this set-up, and not the servant. We’re one man and his dog, ambling in earnest.
‘Progress,’ Elena says.
Nick Duerden is the author of People Who Like Dogs Like People Who Like Dogs
