Neighbourhood dogs and their unnamed owners

As dog owners we have all been there…. The moment can arise after weeks, months, years or even decades. You have met this person tens, hundreds or thousands of times and yet you have no idea what their name is.

You have potentially chatted to them for hours, sharing life experiences, laughs and hard times… But what is their name again?

What I am referring to is the very common and amusing way that we will know the names of 10s or 100s of dogs in our local area whom we meet whilst out early morning or late night. And yet we have no idea what their owners are called.

At home we refer to them as “Bob’s owner”, “Balder’s mum”, “eldest son of Tassen”. And amusingly our Partners and families know exactly whom we are talking about.

This is by no means a Norwegian thing. My father with over 50 years of walking our family dogs in the park refers to hundreds of people in relation to their dog’s name.

As we take a walk and talk with both them and their dogs we find out about their jobs, families and life history. Yet as the first five times that our dogs met up and showed an interest in playing together we stood there in relative silence, it feels slightly grandiose to present yourself by name to someone you have now met on multiple occasions.

Recently whilst at the supermarket without either of our dogs I bumped into one such “friend”.

We started catching up and over came his partner whom he was waiting for. She said hello and asked how we knew each other.

Sheepishly like two schoolboys caught smoking behind the bike sheds we explained that we meet up to walk our dogs.

Clearly she knew the protocol and anonymity of the neighbourhood dog owner and neither presented herself nor asked for my name.

Long live the unnamed dog owners of the World

Doggies: Banipal, Punky, Tesla, Poppy and Lucy