“The walk is a foundation of your relationship with your dog. It is your daily adventure, wherein you and your trusted hound contend with the world. It is the time of day your dog looks forward to with tremendous excitement, often with yips of delight and out-of-control-metronome fast tail wagging. If your dog kept a journal, the longest entries would be accounts of the day’s walk. Practically speaking, this is the only time you spend where you experience the wider world in real time together. Training sessions are great fun (and necessary!) but they are more like school than shared experience. On the walk, you and your dog are together on one accord, a team.”

“The walk in the city is an unnaturally unending kaleidoscope of sensory input. The miasma of scent, the orchestra of sound, the dynamic moving pictures of sight are all there, each at maximum output level. In the city, the walk is like nothing else nature has to offer. It is beautiful, challenging, sometimes overwhelming. The dog adapts. The walk with a dog is a reminder of the world untamed, unclaimed, and unknown. Armed with only rudimentary tools and one once-wild friend, humans came out of the forest and into the campfire circle, then the village, then the town, then the city.”