By B

GRADE: B+

Sometimes nothing is more delightful than walking a dog that does not belong to you. There is something about it that makes you feel briefly like a totally new person, a person with a different life. It depends on the dog of course. But more than that, it depends on the dog’s real owner. And also the weather.

For instance, maybe it is 11:00 on a Sunday morning in February. You find yourself walking a huge golden lab of considerable nobility through the West Village. This dog does not belong to you, and you, unfortunately, do not live in this neighborhood. But it is a beautiful day out, and extra-beautiful because it is February, and with the dog on your leash, the bricks in the sidewalk feel like they are yours. You can pretend that your jacket does not come from the Gap. You pass by Marc Jacobs, on the corner. Maybe it is from there! And when you turn another corner, past Magnolia Bakery, the dog stops to lick powdered sugar off the sidewalk. Really.

If you happen to be smoking, you might take a deeply satisfying drag from your cigarette and hope to see Lili Taylor with her dog. Maybe you will and maybe you won’t. But if you do you will nod and smile as you pass her, giving her the secret, hello dogowner smile, even though it will be dishonest because you yourself are not a real dogowner.

You don’t need to be in an especially great neighborhood to appreciate someone else’s dog. It works perfectly well in Columbia Heights, in DC, where there is a man who sits on a stoop across the street screaming “That’s right! Get in your white car, Whitey!” as a lady climbs into a decidedly un-ebony Ford Focus. You have a big Weimaraner-among-other-things trotting at your side, and again, it is an unseasonably gorgeous day. The weeds along the sidewalk are as tall as your ankles and they are kind of fantastic even if they are weeds. This dog is named Bella, and she adores you, and you think, “What if this were my dog and my neighborhood and that was my white car and my crazy man on the stoop?” It is a nice thought. Bella is pooping happily.

Poop is the one bad thing, but it’s not really that bad. One time when I was walking Bella, she pooped in a man’s patch of yard just as he was getting out of his car. Suddenly, I realized I had nothing to scoop it with. Because Bella is not my dog and I don’t even own a dog, and you forget these things if you are just a daytripper. I had to sheepishly ask the man if he could fetch me a bag from his house, which was a ragged but elaborate Victorian townhouse on the corner of Park Road. The worst part is that when he brought me the bag I couldn’t even find the poop anymore. So I scooped a big clump of dirt and pretended it was poop and ran away very quickly. It was sort of embarassing, but also kind of magical. Which is the thing about walking other people’s dogs. It is not unlike an out-of-body-experience. And someday maybe you will have your own dog and it’s hard to say if that is better or worse than having someone else’s for the length of one cigarette.