City dog

Since I didn't feel like being the last (wo)man standing in Princeton, Bisou and I have taken a trip to see what the bumper stickers would call her grandparents. (Hadley Freeman would maybe agree?) This isn't her first experience of being a city dog, but it's my first seeing her as one for more than, say, an afternoon. Thoughts thus far are below.

Pros:

-If you have a fluffy little dog, you will have to converse with every other person walking a fluffy little dog. Given the area, that is a *lot* of people. Women of a certain age, but not exclusively. And... it's kind of nice! They say that people are friendlier in the country/suburbs than the city, but the thing is, there are actually people around in the city, so even if a smaller % of them are chatty, there's so much more chatting going on. Plus, being on my home turf, I must give off a vibe of familiarity. Even to socialite-seeming women! Who are oddly not put off by my choice of years-old Gap-nightgown-as-dress. Maybe it's the vaguely-Chanel-looking thrift store bag I'm using until my regular bag is repaired, but you'd think these would be exactly the women who'd know what's what in that department.

-A far, far longer walk is feasible when there's actually stuff to see. With all due respect to nature. The deers, etc., are great, but relatively infrequent. Whereas glamorous Italian tourists (who don't talk to me, obvs) are pretty much everywhere here.

-Thanks to those first two, headphones are not needed. I'm way behind in my podcasts, and thus extra-prepared for NJ Transit being useless.

-No ticks!

Cons:

-There's so, so much on city streets for a dog to surreptitiously ingest. I'd like to think so far, so good, but who can say?

-The dog run is a nice idea and all, but walking Bisou to the run, as vs. driving her there, means she's exhausted by the time we get there. And while I'm sure Bisou wouldn't be the first poodle to ride the crosstown bus...

-A country dog has certain... requirements, having to do with the need for a patch of grass.