The streets of New York City have a unique cast of recurring characters.

Taxi drivers hollering at one another, the skateboarders scraping the pavement. Homeless people who’ve set up encampments. Nannies pushing babies in high-end strollers. And dog walkers.

We’ve all seen these intrepid souls negotiating a tangle of leashes and tails and whipping out plastic bags to retrieve poop off the footpath. It is not the most glamorous occupation, but for me dog walking is more than just a job. It’s a love story.

I’ve been a dog walker for over two years, ever since graduating from college. For most of that time, I’ve had the same four regular “clients.”

They range from a tiny Yorkie-Poodle, to a rather large German Shepherd-Wolfhound mix. I’ve been with one since he was only 12 weeks old, and another since he was already 8 years old. From walking these dogs nearly every day of the week, for months on end, the situation is no longer a means to an end in terms of paying rent and covering my bills. I’ve invested my heart in these animals as if they were my own.

Having worked in restaurants for several years through high school and college, you could say I’ve gone from taking crap to picking it up, and I couldn’t be happier. Even if it does get on my hand sometimes.

When originally entering the dog walking world, I had no inkling of the effect it would have on my life. Each owner of each dog has become a personal friend, for whom I would do anything and everything. I’ve also begun to relate to the dogs themselves.

Fred hates skateboarders, barking and growling ferociously at them when they get too close. I scream at taxis that cut me off when I ride my bicycle, but like Fred, my bark is worse than my bite.

Spike enjoys chasing little birds, running at them until they fly away out of reach. Don’t you remember running at some pigeons to scare them away when you were a kid? Puka likes to lounge on a couch in the shade with some air conditioning, without a care in the world. She makes me want to grab a beer, put the game on, and relax all afternoon.

Then there’s Norman and Z, who love nothing more than to wrestle, rolling around the rug all day long.

I frequently channel these disparate personalities throughout my day, all the time.

Short of sniffing someone’s butt when I meet them, I’ve basically become a dog. There’s no shortage of fur on my clothing, and if you see me, I very likely have a poop bag in my back pocket. Even if I’m “off-duty.” I sit on the floor frequently, and my friends make fun of me for sniffing everything before I eat it.

The thing is, we can all learn something from our four-legged friends.

We all have a way of making our lives complicated, but sometimes it’s better to appreciate the simple things the way dogs do. They take such joy from life and its little pleasures. Take a cue from my canine friends, and try sniffing the New York City air sometimes. Warmly greet the person you live with. Stare at somebody with great, big eyes when they eat your favourite food.

When life gets you down, give yourself a treat. Then find someone to scratch your back, go for a walk, and really take everything in.

The post How Walking Dogs for a Living Taught Me to Be a Better Human appeared first on ILoveDogsAndPuppies.

“The business, for me, is 30% rebellion, 30% comedy, and 30% for money,” said Gedalya Gottdenger. He was wearing a yarmulke, peyos, and a t-shirt screenprinted with an ostentatious cat in mirror shades. Gottdenger stroked his client for the day, a shy red-hued retriever named Tuppance, and reconsidered his math for a second.

“I want to say the remaining 10% is my love of dogs, but really that’s the overarching reason, much more than 10%.”

An Ultra Orthodox gentleman with a giddy pup in tow may not be an odd sight to everyone, but for those aware of the cultural taboo and relatively benign stereotype that religious Jews fear dogs, Gottdenger sticks out like a bagel at a Passover seder.

A column in the Jewish Daily Forward, a recent book of essays, and even the FAQ section of the website for Hasidic sect Chabad describe the phenomena and offer some explanations from a Kabbalah assertion that dogs have demonic powers to a simple fear of the unfamiliar, to its origin.

“There’s a lot of theories as to why. I’m not really satisfied with any of them,” Gottdenger, 23, says. “The most common suggestion is usually about Nazis and their German Shepherds, but I don’t buy it. We were bred to be afraid, any kind of non-human animals give us the shits.”

“Even cats?” I ask.

“Yeah, even cats,” he says, adding, “but to be fair, cats are assholes.”

Like most of his peers, Gottdenger avoided dogs altogether until his early twenties. The belief that they can “smell fear,” some trainers say, can lead to a negative feedback loop of anxiety between dogs and humans.

He was able to break this pattern through prolonged exposure with his secular friend’s affectionate and clingy chihuahua who demands endless games of fetch and occasionally demonstrates affection through urination.

“The more time I spent with her, I realized that not all dogs are scary and want to kill me,” Gottdenger said.

Unable to have a pet himself, he began to walk the chihuahua for fun, and enjoyed the interactions that followed.

“I usually get comments from Latino men. They say, ‘I never saw a Jew with a dog before!’”

While we sat on a bench outside a shop on Myrtle Avenue, a young African American employee of a shop came out with a cup of water to offer to Tuppance. He and Gottdenger had a brief chat about the dog’s age, shyness, and the weather.

As for other Hasidim, sometimes they’ll laugh or furtively snap a camera phone photo, but are too scared to approach.

Tuppance’s “Mom”, Nitza, met Gottdenger through the Jewish community in Williamsburg. They are both working towards careers in social work, and Nitza agreed to hire to him to walk Tuppance several times a week while he saves some cash for school. Two years later, he’s turned his neurotic hobby into a burgeoning career.

“He has a foot in both the Satmar community, and in the whole yuppie, hipster, whatever you want to call it community,” Nitza says.

Although she admits that what he’s doing is unique, it’s all part of the cherished melting pot character of New York. “I couldn’t give a crap about the novelty of it,” she says. “He genuinely loves dogs, he’s very calm, very reliable. She’s not easy to get along with, but she really does like him.”

Recently Gottdenger has expanded the business by walking more dogs each day and offering to watch pets while their owners are on vacation, promoting himself with business cards and social media as “The Hasidic Dog Walker.” His card shows a traditionally dressed Hasidic man looking down, perhaps with trepidation at a dog with a leash in its mouth. Above that, his email: “notafraidofdogs@gmail.com.”

“I love that as a business mantra,” says Erin Mathieu of Bed-Stuy, whose self-described “jerk Chihuahua” Reno was the first dog Gottdenger walked. “It’s a wonderfully snarky response to the pigeonholing that New Yorkers tend to participate in when it comes to the Ultra Orthodox.”

Dog-walking is a standard job for those who appreciate the flexible hours, ability to work outdoors, ease and informality of working for oneself, and occasionally, the animal companionship. Hasidim, on the other hand, live a life where every minute detail is dictated by religious law and customs, and likely see the precarious profession itself, let alone its proximity to fearsome dogs, as opposite their rigid lifestyle.

Some attempt a difficult transition out of Hasidic life, but Gottdenger, who is part of a sect that he describes as “no more open than any other,” prefers to remain religious while testing cultural boundaries. He notes that like cycling, socializing, or attending secular functions, having an animal companion is not prohibited by religious laws.

“But while it’s ‘only culture’ it’s still culture,” he says, emphasizing the extreme centrality of tradition as a supplement to religious life. “It’s not a revolutionary thing, I’m not walking around Williamsburg naked, but for some people, somehow, it’s enough.”

Hoping to bridge the divide in more direct ways, he encourages gentile and secular friends curious about Judaism and Hasidic philosophy to try Torah study with Pratt’s Chabad Rabbi, and interns for a new organization called Young Advocates for Fair Education (YAFFED), which promotes the expansion of secular education amongst Ultra Orthodox children.

“I am angry for not having a well-rounded mathematical or linguistic education,” Gottdenger says. “I’m not upset about not being brought up with Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, and baseball, but it’s hard to make it, to become independent, without a well-rounded education.”

Gottdenger’s parents and most of his religious friends don’t know about his new profession, and he doesn’t know how negatively they will react, but perhaps compared to others who more radically transgress cultural norms—such as queer or atheist Hasidim who are forced to either give up the communities in which they were raised or to live double lives—he isn’t too worried.

“People are ultimately going to live the life they want to lead,” Gottdenger says. “And even if it contradicts Judaism or Christianity or Islam or whatever, we have to let them be able to do it.”

The post Meet Brooklyn’s Fearless Hasidic Dog Walker appeared first on ILoveDogsAndPuppies.

“She was completely skin and bones,” Beach told Fox CT. “She walked very slowly, like everything hurt.”

Beach approached the dog and after realizing how skinny and abused the pet was, she called police. Officers were dispatched to Bernardino Avenue to pick up the dog and transport her to an animal clinic.

Veterinarians examined the pet, found no microchip on her and said she was approximately one or two years old. A healthy dog at that age should weigh between 40-60 lbs, but the abused pet only weighed 15 lbs.

Enfield Animal Control is keeping the dog and nursing her back to health. Once she is healthy she will be made available for adoption, meanwhile there is an ongoing police investigation and rescuers hope the criminals who abused the young dog are apprehended.

“We’ve never had a dog in this bad of shape come into the pound before,” said Animal Control Officer Eric Boucher. “[This is] plain neglect, abuse animal cruelty.”

The post Emaciated Pit Bull Saved Thanks to Dog Walker appeared first on ILoveDogsAndPuppies.