Sustainable Change project – when puppy and community are one!

The lovely Ethical Pets are helping me work out what items they do that would be good for Bobby. I’ve also found another site that looks useful www.ecodogcompany.com which has a range of stuff and what looks like a useful blog. I have to confess I have still been going down the easy route of just getting what is available at the pet shops near me. This is mainly due to limited time and energy, and not planning ahead. Hopefully I’ll improve as we go along. And hopefully we’ll stop getting through mounds of FSC mark kitchen towel once Bobby has learnt all toileting happens outside! One thing I have done is to email my local council to see if they are looking into allowing dog waste into the composting bin or composting what goes into the public bins. Some councils do this and it seems to me there’s not much point having compostable waste bags if it just ends up in landfill. Anyway, on to more pleasant topics…

One of the previous themes was ‘Community’. Well in the space of 3 days of dog walking, I have met and spoken to more local people than I usually do in the course of several months! I had heard that dog walking is a great way to meet people (particularly if you’re single, which I’m not). For example, I had a long chat with Peter from a road round the corner who has lived here years and gets out for walks even though he has to walk slowly with a stick.  It helps having a cute dog, even if he hasn’t yet learnt to stay firmly on the ground. I’m told if I go out at the same times every day, Bobby and I will start to create a new set of friends. I’m not sure I want to be that structured but still, it’s nice to know. I guess it is rather like when I used to ride a motorbike. Motorcyclists often greet each other with a wave. Same as caravanners. It is clearly that sense of shared experience, shared common interest that makes us feel comfortable with acknowledging a stranger when normally we wouldn’t. Fascinating. Not all dog people are the same. At an introductory dog training session yesterday, there was one lady there who had both my hubby and I hoping we would never have to hear her voice again. But I guess that’s like any community.

Next week, I plan to wrap up this month’s theme. I have tried doing some reading on the internet about sustainability and dogs as pets but not found very much that’s informative. There’s lots of reviews of the book ‘Time to eat the dog? The Real Guide to Sustainable Living’ though. The following post covers pretty much what I’ve found elsewhere – http://www.attainable-sustainable.net/guest-post-sustainable-dog-care/ and this next one is an interesting post on why having a dog is a good thing, even if it isn’t really up there in the sustainability stakes - http://tippecanoegreen.blogspot.com/2011/10/can-dog-ownership-be-sustainable.html - funny that it should mention getting out into your community……