Walking With a Dog Walker

Dog walker, Buenos Aires.  Joshua Stephens does not recommend this technique.

Professional dog walkers are a common site in New York City, where they tow a mixed herd of dogs, big key chains dangling. Joshua Stephens used to be one of them, and he’s written a book about his professional experiences, and about the unexpected way dog walking intersected with his political life.  Stephens is a self-declared anarchist, and he says that combining the two parts of his life “wasn’t that novel a combination.”

On a walk to the Washington Square Park dog runs, he talked about how the routine of dog walking makes you attentive to the realities of life in terms of both public and private space — aware of the commercial function of many neighborhoods, of the homeless, and even of the more vulnerable side of his sometimes very affluent clients.    

"Human/animal relationships are really tender, and they get at parts of us that we don’t necessarily want to wear on our sleeves,” he said. And dogs at their most natural. Dogs at the dog run are examples of “unrestricted, unmediated joy.”

And dogs level the playing field. To the extent that all levels of society can “at some level engage with another living thing in a deeply compassionate, deeply empathetic way,” Sherman said, “there’s hope for radical social transformation.”

Looking for a dog walker? Stephens recommends someone self-employed. If you’re evaluating possible candidates on the street, “anybody walking more than four dogs at a time is not doing it right.”