Alistair Heather: My generation is used to renting – so now I'm borrowing a dog

A colleague mentioned in passing that she’d taken a neighbour’s dog oot a daunder the evening previous, along the links. She’d met the dog, and by proxy the neighbour, through a website called Borrow My Doggy. They had each set up profiles, exchanged messages, then arranged a time to get the wee pal oot for a stroll.

I was excited. I immediately imagined myself striding out every lunchtime with a new animal companion round Coldside in Dundee. The mad, muscular boxer fae up the close that current gies me the fear. The puppy collie that’s leaning to fetch in the backies, tumbling clumsily over its own legs. Both these animals would become my pals, as would all dogs of Dundee. I’d be a dead specifically Dundee Dogs Dr Doolittle.

Dogs relieve stress, improve mood, provide laughs and company. Dog walks get ye oot the hoose every day for a good stroll, which does a million favours for your physical health and sense of wellbeing. Dogs are brought onto university campuses at times of high tension around exams, because students find that gien a cheery dog a wee pat can massively improve their mental state. Some schools bring in dogs for children to practise their reading too, because they are unjudgemental.

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Nae wonder 485,000 homes in Scotland have a pet dog.

But like so much else in this time of generational shift, actual ownership of a dog is an unobtainable dream. Folk like me that move fae rented flat to rented flat, fae city to city all the time chasing work, we cannae settle into the sort of routine you need for a dog. It wouldnae be fair on the thing to keep uprooting it, to keep changing its environment, its vet and all that.

And you can add to the other complications the near impossibility of finding a landlord willing to let you have a pet.

That’s where Borrow My Doggy comes in.

My generation is accustomed to borrowing, lending, renting, sharing. We rent flats, lease cars, get music and media by subscription rather than owning stacks of DVDs and newspapers. So the idea of getting a shottie of somebody else’s dog via an app sounds timely, and it sounds IDEAL.

I signed up to Borrow My Doggy. And its exactly what I’d hoped for. I made a profile, with a picture of myself, some details about my work, hobbies, things like that. Then I could swipe through profiles of dogs.

It’s free to sign up, and to look through all the dogs near your hoose that are needing a walk, or minded for a weekend or a holiday or whatever.

You’ve to pay if you want to contact them, and that was a sticking point. It’s £13 to get a ‘premium’ membership that lets you message folk and arrange dog walks. That’s no cheap. I flipped through a few profiles of fine looking dogs who no doubt would be lovely for a stravaig up Templeton Woods or whatever. But I didnae see one that was about to be worth the cost of a dinner oot.

Then I seen Evie.

Look at this dog!

I paid the £13 fast as lightning and sent the owner a message.

She was a friendly finance worker in the toon, and I’m sure her story will be one repeated widely; Evie was bought 11 months ago and raised as a “home office” pet. Now her owner needs to transition back to the office at least a day or two a week. And Evie is maybe a bit maladjusted from the constant attention and lack of diverse company that come with being a working-fae-hame pup. She also needs more regular walks than can be easily supplied by someone up against deadlines.

Evie’s owner was hoping for someone to take her out, and along I came.

Evie, much like anything you order online, wasn’t the size I’d expected. I thought she’d be a big thigh-high thing, like a labrador. So it was a surprise when I turned up to meet her and her owner in Fairmuir, and found her to be cat-sized. But what a bonnie animal.

Her owner showed me how well-trained Evie was, and took me a walk myself to make sure all three of us got on, and I wasnae mental or a dog-knapper or anything.

A day or two later and I’m picking Evie up fae her owner in Stobbie in the car. The owner, like a nervous mammy at the school gates with her Primary 1, has a bag packed for me and is all anticipation. Evie has a hilarious carry case that she gets put in, which I popped her inside and took her down the waterfront.

All my dreams of dog ownership came true. Folk treated me in a friendlier way, anyone that I vaguely knew came over to ask about the dog. Other dog owners sniffed about me as our dogs sniffed about each other. Dogs are an extrovert’s best friend, it seems.

Evie herself behaved immaculately. She sat on the bench peaceful and quiet as I drank coffee. She snuffled and sniffed at every post and leaf when we strolled.

I had been told by her owner that she’s baith very curious about and extremely wary of bairns and other dogs.

She watched passing retrievers and labradoodles with close attention. She would plonk her bum down on the ground, refuse to move, and just stare at other dogs strolling by. But when I gave her the chance to approach and say hello to the animals, she’d get dead shy and skitter in behind my legs.

Cute in the extreme. After the long lockdowns, Evie is not quite socially adjusted. Me neither, pal.

We only had an hour before I had to get back to my home office. So we did some recall practise in the park, I gave her treats, and scratched her chin a lot. Then it was back in the hilarious net bag thing and back up the road.

Her owner was waiting expectantly, and was chuffed to hear all went well. Evie went straight inside after her adventure, cooried doon on her cushion and napped. A job well done.

This dog-borrowing is more than a great way for loners like myself to get a haud of a furry companion. The increasing popularity of Borrow My Doggy is a result of a real criss.

As yous ken, in lockdown basically everyone went out and got a dog. Google Trends shows a massive spike in searches for “puppy for sale” in the UK as the initial wave of the virus swept across the world. Consumer groups and animal rights watchers were enthusiastic about the value of dogs to mental and physical wellbeing, but warned that these dogs are for life, not just for lockdown. As far back as September 2020 concerns were being aired that this sudden vast uptick in ownership “could lead to a dog welfare crisis as people return to work away from the home.”

The separation from owners and pets as we return to work is tough on owners, too.

Evie's owner – who I’ll call Claire here – was very open about the difficulty she was facing balancing out her and Evie’s emergence fae hame working and pandemic lifestyles. She had to be back at work, there was much work to do, and many meetings to have. Long afternoons throwing balls and floofing glorious golden fur were a thing of the past. But she now had this massive emotional connection to her puppy.

Claire had signed up to Borrow My Doggy only reluctantly. She laughed as she told me how she’d questioned the BMD representative when they’d got in touch. “How deep do you background check people wanting to borrow dogs?” she’d demanded. “Do they verify with passports, how do we know they’re ok?!”

She herself had a daughter, and said that the first time I came round to collect Evie, it felt just like when her daughter went off to primary school. Apparently Claire’d fretted around the house, swithering on the edge of texting me for updates every moment I was away.

Now, I feel, there’s trust there. Evie runs up, tail wagging, to greet me now. Claire seems much more chill. I feel at ease too, and have a lunchtime walk to look forward to.

The mass acquisition of animals in lockdown, and our subsequent return to something like normal, has created a crisis for animals in care. They cannae get the time and attention they are used to, and their owners feel the same separation anxiety.

But this can be a wonderful thing. As young folk are locked out of home ownership, and dog owners have their pet-care obligations strained, the groups can form a symbiotic relationship. Us non-dog-owners can pick up the slack, and pick up some of the benefits of spending time with animals.

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The app I used is one solution. Less formal, community-led initiatives will no doubt be emerging to cope with the crisis.

The main outcomes I’ve experienced are a fresh relationship with my city (from the perspective of a dog walker), an improved sense of community, through getting to know Claire, and of course my friendship with Evie.

I’ll get a dog one day, a wee Evie of my own, and a flat to house it in. But for now, as the grinding economic crises, ballooning house prices and itinerant work patterns count against me, I’m more than happy to contribute to my community by volunteering as a friendly neighbourhood dog walker. There are certainly worse ways to spend a sunny hour in Dundee.