After the dog grew up, considering its social needs, we contacted an organization – the dog walking team. Although it is an organization, it has no management structure itself, just a loose connection between young dog owners who live in the same district. Usually every night after working overtime, everyone encourages each other, urging each other to meet up in a remote park or square with their exhausted body and spirited dogs.
Once they meet, the human and the dog separate and enter two parallel social tracks without interfering with each other. Everyone never knows each other’s real names, but there are still endless things to talk about. From sharing dog-raising experience to various real personal life experiences, social anxiety has been cured the most here.
The first time Gouzi went to meet his friends, he was frightened by the enthusiasm of the other dogs in the team. Due to its young age and size, it will only lie on the ground and beg for mercy in the face of chasing and besieging by other dogs. This kind of scene is also a challenge for new owners like us: we feel distressed and angry at the same time, and finally we can only take it aside to appease.
At this time, a voice said: “Don’t be afraid, let it play with the dogs, it will become more courageous when it plays.” I looked back and saw an old man sitting at the top of the steps, looking at it with a smile Dogs on the lawn in the distance.
When I recovered, it was the third time I came to walk the dog. The old man whistled directly at the dog who was running towards him, then touched the dog’s head and said, “Look, after playing once or twice, you have become more courageous. You seem to have grown a little bit longer. “At that moment, I realized that the old man is the kind of squire-like character that Mr. Xiang Biao said. He has a clear picture of the dog walking team, knows when each dog joins the team, and understands the dog’s temperament and social relations. ; More importantly, he also cares about the growth of each dog, and his observation perspective does sometimes bring surprising cognition to the dog owner. For example, when he said that our dogs became more courageous, I Involuntarily he breathed a sigh of relief.
《宠爱》剧照During the dog walks that followed, my attention was on the old man. The old man not only observes the dogs, but also plays with them, and accompanies the tired owners in the play with the dogs. Gradually, the owner will also take the initiative to chat with the elderly, talking about the odds and ends in life. The elderly showed a gratifying understanding of this. In many cases, the old man listened to and comforted the anxiety of the young man, and on rare occasions he talked about his plight. He once talked about the two corgis he raised with excitement, but after they passed away, although he also thought about raising dogs, he was unable to do so.
Since then, it has become a special comfort to watch the old man ride his bike into the park every day. The special thing is that it seems to break the privilege of pets for young people; it gives the elderly group a worthwhile way to seek the intimate companionship of pets; it provides a possibility of communication across the generation gap. Young people seem to be constantly constructing their anxiety narratives, paying attention to their emotional needs, and seeking ways to relieve their inner anxiety, alienation, and loneliness. The emotions that the elderly group feels in the process of fighting aging and gradually losing company are always absent, and they always seem to “clumsily” seek a way out: go out in the morning rush hour or dance the square dance. Older people have little room for effort in paying attention to their emotions, and some of the only effort is often seen in a very negative way.
In contrast, the old man in the dog-walking team seemed to have found a way to solve it – he recklessly enjoyed the company of pets and even young people in this exclusive pet bar, so he ideally constructed A community of “young people-pets-old people” centered on pets, and in this community, intergenerational differences are overcome to the greatest extent, and everyone comforts each other in the vast city.
Every time I look at the back of the old man waving goodbye to the dogs leaving, I think, in the future, when I am old, I will also have such an open-air, free exclusive pet, left golden retriever, right second ha, sitting with corgis Retirement slowly on the lawn.
