Mike White - How to Walk a Dog

Each morning, I close our front door, clip the lead on to Coopers collar, restrain his enthusiasm as he weaves through the gate and jumps into the back of the car, and then we set off for the dog park. Its a five-minute drive, and on the way we drop off my partner, Nikki, so she can walk down to her work in the city. When we arrive at the dog park, Cooper leaps out as soon as the cars hatch is open a crack, and flies down the path. By the time Ive selected a stick from the bundle I keep in the car, he is ready below me, waiting for the first throw. And thus the days excitement truly begins for him.

Our dog park is down a small side road, surrounded by bush, narrow at both ends and bulbous in the middlethe shape of a python thats swallowed a wallaby. At the top, under high-voltage power lines that hiss and sizzle in the rain, is a carpark where council workers eat pies for lunch, tradesmen snooze and hoons pull doughnuts on weekends.

At the other end is a community garden, one of those green spaces where everyone has a small plot of hope. In summer, lettuces and potatoes emerge, unattended courgettes swell to marrows, and the communal compost heap is a pyre of rot irresistible to many of our dogs.

In between the carparks asphalt and the vegetable gardens seduction are several acres of sloping grass and trees, with some of the loveliest views over Wellington harbour youll find anywhere in the city. For the past ten years, weve watched this city and seascape in all its shades on a spectrum from blue to bleakest black, from sparkling to malevolent. Those days where the planes taking off from the isthmus between Lyall Bay and Evans Bay seem to just hang in the air, or sunlight shafts through low cloud and illuminates distant Hutt Valleys grey like some godly spotlight.

The park sits between well-heeled and well-desired Brooklyn above and slightly bohemian and very Green Aro Valley below. Ive always wondered how such a prime spot so close to the city has avoided being developed, and it seems to be the result of good fortune as much as great foresight. It was once home to a hospital, the foundations of which remain at one edge. Other iterations followed, other plans were made, but eventually the area was deemed part of the town belt, inviolate unless future councillors consider it too valuable to be just the home of courting t and romping dogs, as it is now.

It has a small flat level at the top, a giant gum, pine and phutukawa placed across it like arboreal statues. From there, the park slides gently down, an easy incline that turns to waterlogged treachery in winter rains. And at one edge is a separate, secret finger of the park, fringed by a reckless mix of blackberries and regenerating native shrubs. At the very end there used to be a kids rope swing, but the rope frayed long ago and, anyway, the council frowns deeply on such unregulated adventure.

If I stand where the kids used to launch themselves from, and the sun is out, I can tell the season by where my shadow falls each morning, like a rudimentary sundial. At the summer solstice, my outline darkens the trunk of a sickly pine sapling directly in front of me. Deep into June, my shadow lies 90 degrees to my left, in a patch of mhoe (whiteywood) trees. I like the sense of time gently changing despite my daily routine remaining the same.

Dogs like routine. Oh, they love spontaneity, but they rely on routine, expect it, demand it. Cooper, an abandoned farm dog we discovered at the SPCA, knows the routine from the moment our alarm goes off in the morning to the moment our light goes off at night. The day is delineated by a series of good things that he anticipates, relishes and moves on fromto the next good thing. Its a simple existence in a sense, one of rote, which we might think borders on boring. But show me a dog who doesnt enthusiastically eat the same meal its had for years, or bound along the same walk it always has, tail skyward.

For Cooper, the morning trip to our dog park has been a constant since we first got him. Its attraction never pales. He never understands how it takes me so long to get ready, and counts off every necessity as its arranged: jacket, gumboots, cap, keys By the time Im heading to the front door and grabbing his lead from the windowsill, hes already sitting outside on the top step, ready to be clipped on. As soon as he hears the click of the leads catch, hes leaping down the steps, pulling me towards the car. On our way to the park, he stands silently in the back of the car as we drive from our little home by the sea towards the city, and carefully monitors our route, though it never varies. But from the moment I flick the indicator to turn off the main road and veer down to the park, he starts squealing. Its excitement, expectation, sheer eagerness for what lies immediately aheadfor the dog park, a kind of scruffy suburban Elysian Fields. Only when Ive flung the first stick as far as I can and Cooper has sprinted to retrieve it does any sense of calm replace that utter urgency of anticipation.

And so it is, every weekday, every morning, much the same. The mystery of why repetition doesnt reduce a dogs enjoyment of a walk perhaps says more about our own threshold for joy than it does about dogs dullness.

Ive had dogs for much of my life, and have always seen walking them as one of the worlds true pleasures. What is it they say about golf ? A good walk spoiled? Walking your dog is the oppositeits a walk infinitely enhanced by your dogs absolute delight. You cant help but share some of it.

I started walking dogs when I was a teenager. My father had just died, my sister had left for university, our previous dog had to be put down, and our family had almost instantly shrunk from five to two. So, when we got a new dog to help make the house feel less empty and our lives more full, the deal was that my mum would walk him in the morning and Id walk him after school. I would take Gyp, a black-and-white mongrel, to a small park near a maternity hospital, with two ancient oak trees and enough space for him to play and career. This daily task never seemed a chore.

And, years later, I think I still gain as much pleasure as Cooper does from each mornings trip to the dog park. The routine might always be the same, but no day is. The people we meet, the conversations we have, the light across the city, the shadowplay on the harbourall vary by small degree.

Those of us who gather at our park, whose daily schedules coincide, have over the years become acquainted and close. Were linked by the fundamental fact of owning and exercising a dog, but its become much more than glancing interaction. As our dogs chase and sniff and stray into the bushes, we stand and chat and laugh. We see each other most days, know much about each others lives, and have shared more than youd expect in a public place. Every day I learn a lot. And all in a setting where youre surrounded by dogs suffused with the joy of being outdoors, surrounded by grass and wind and excitement.

Its all so simple, but so happy.

I always think its the perfect way to start each day.

Cooper. It could have been worse. Quite a lot worse.

As we collected our new dog from the SPCA, we mulled over whether to change the name hed been allotted while in there and anoint him with something original. Cooper was fine as a name, but calling him something wed chosen would somehow make him seem more like our dog, rather than someone elses that wed inherited.

But then, as we waited for the paperwork to be completed in the cramped entrance of Wellingtons old SPCA, a staff member came down the stairs, a ginger-and-white puppy curled between her elbow and armpit, and presented it to a couple standing beside us.