Dogless Walkers (DOMINIC WIGHTMAN, 7/29/25, Country Squire)
Last week, retriever man passed without his dog. He stopped. The dog was dead, he said, taken by cancer. He still walked the same route, he explained, because the habit was stronger than the absence. He could almost feel her padding beside him, could almost hear the soft pant of her breath. The movement was good for his mind, his body. His wife had died a few months before, the same disease. He spoke plainly, without self-pity, as though stating the weather. I invited him for tea. He gratefully accepted. Then he walked on.
Later, I saw the woman with the boxer. She was alone too—the dog with her ex-husband while she ‘cared for their children over the summer’. We talked for a change. She laughed about the chaos of holidays, the way time stretches and snaps without warning. There was no mention of why the dog lived elsewhere now, or what had fractured between them. Some things go unsaid.
It struck me then how many walk alone, and for how many reasons. Grief, habit, the need to outpace silence—all of them invisible beneath the surface of a nod, a brief exchange.
There is value in stopping, in removing the headphones. You never know what silence you might interrupt, or what quiet sorrow you might briefly share. The fields do not care, but the people do. Even if they don’t say it.
Our dog not only has a crew of folks who stop to chat and pet her–including three who carry treats–but if I walk without her (due to heat or snow) cars pull up to ask if she’s okay.