Parker Potter is a former archaeologist and historian, and a retired lawyer. He is currently a semi-professional dogwalker who lives and works in Contoocook.
As my little gray bio box states, I am a semi-professional dogwalker. Moreover, on my daily walks, it is not unusual for an unfamiliar dog to end up sitting on my lap and licking my face just as its owner starts to apologize for how standoffish his or her dog is. It’s a gift. Even so, my path to becoming a semi-professional dogwalker has been a bit circuitous.
When I was growing up, my family had several dogs, but our history of dog ownership was a cavalcade of misfortune, both canine and human. At the time my father married my mother, he had a dog named Mr. White, who did not like sharing my father with my mother. He expressed his displeasure by throwing up after every meal, earning the nickname “the dog with the upside down stomach.” My father ended up finding a new home for Mr. White where he stood a better chance of keeping his dog chow down.
Next came Blitzen, the German shepherd cross we owned when we moved from Pennsylvania to a subdivision outside Findlay, Ohio. On Blitzen’s first day as an Ohio dog, he was nabbed three times by the animal control posse. Shortly thereafter, we found him a home with wide open spaces where he could roam freely without getting arrested.
When I was in the third grade, we got a basset hound we named Bugle. Bugle was with us for less than a year before he was hit by a car after escaping from our yard through a gate left open by the trash collectors.
When I was in college, my family got a Dalmatian we named Baron. He once bit my grandmother on the belly, but she was a dog lover and a good sport. For her, the bite was just an acceptable cost of doing business with a dog. However, when Baron bit my sister in the face, his number was up. Plainly, nothing in my family’s history of dog ownership marked me as a future dogwalker.
Then I met Tigger the Biting Dog. Tigger was owned by a co-worker on my first job after college. He earned his nickname when he took a nip at our boss. But me, he liked, and not because I was tasty. Every day when Tigger and Jim came into work, Tigger stopped by my office for a good long scratch before following Jim upstairs to his desk. One day, when I found Tigger out wandering away from home, I was able to coax him into my car — without ever touching him — so that I could take him home.
Fast forward forty years. The first summer of my daily walks, I saw a Lab-Dalmatian mix named Molly on the loose a couple of times, evading her family’s attempts to capture her. On one of her frolics, one I did not witness, she was hit by a car. Later, as Molly was rehabbing, her family saw me walking by like I did every day, and they asked whether I’d like to take Molly for a spin. I said yes, and Molly was perfectly happy to head off on a leash with a total stranger. I’ve been walking her daily ever since, for more than two years.
On our walks, I’m primarily interested in the walking part, while Molly is more interested in sniffing things and chasing chipmunks (unsuccessfully, I am happy to report). With Molly, I’ve learned the art of compromise, finding ways to make sure that we each get the walk that we need.
After I had been walking Molly for about a year, I started walking Annabelle, who is part Dalmatian and part who knows what. I knew Annie long before I started walking her; she often barked at me from the porch of her house, and I always answered her. Several times, I met Annabelle on a leash with her owner, and we hit it off so well that I offered to walk her. Her owners were initially reluctant because Annie had a history of chomping strangers, and had developed quite a taste for delivery people. When Annabelle’s owners finally decided to let me try and walk her, she was a complete sweetheart. We concluded that once Annie saw me being friendly with her family, she wasn’t barking at me aggressively; she was inviting me to join her pack and asking me to take her for a walk. From Annabelle, I have learned to listen more attentively.
Two more dogs I don’t even walk have been mentors to me. Until they moved away, I used to see Hamilton and Filson walking with their owner every week or two. Sensing their shyness, I always sat down on the sidewalk when I saw them coming, to put myself on their level, and I also tried to avoid eye contact, to make myself less threatening. At first, Hamilton wanted nothing to do with me, but the last time we met, he fully stretched out his retractable leash trotting over to me and practically threw himself at me before rubbing up against me like a cat. From Hamilton, I learned the virtue of patience and the value of meeting him where he was rather than where I thought he should be or hoped he would be.
With all of my canine companions, I come for the affection but stay for the life lessons.