Day 3- The Dog Park -or- Dog spelled backwards is God

The dog park is an excellent place to meet people. Dogs are a great buffer and give you a topic to talk about. People LOVE talking about their dogs, in fact, sometimes you can't get them to stop. Every time I go to the dog park there is at least one guy there. Guys seems to be pretty good about walking their dogs and taking them out to play. The key to the dog park is timing. You might have to go a bunch of times before you find a guy you actually want to talk to, but the guys are there and are super easy to approach. Try to go at least 3 times a week either after work or on the weekends. Weekday mornings/afternoons are dead, of course. I definitely recommend taking a dog with you. Borrow one if you have to. Please don't be the weirdo with no dog hanging out at a dog park. That is just sad.

Difficulty to initiate contact: 1

Pros

You need to exercise your dog anyway/ your friend's dog needs exercise

Guys do frequent dog parks

They are not busy doing something else

Talking about dogs is comfortable conversation that lets you get to know them without them

necessarily knowing you're interested

You can leave whenever you want (I'm still scarred from the dinner date)

Cons

There are usually only a few people there at a time, catching a guy you might like there is tricky

Mud/ dog poop/ icky weather (it's currently 32 degrees)

Looking cute and staying clean can be tricky depending on weather and dogs jumping on you

Monday (a holiday), 1:00pm

Normally this would be a horrible time to go, but it's MLK day so everyone is off work. My hope is that they will be thinking "I should take my dog to the park after lunch". There were a few cars when I pulled up and about 5 or 6 dogs in the park when I arrived. Unfortunately, every man there seemed to be there with a woman. I actually think this is the first time I've seen that happen. There has always been at least one single guy there during previous visits. I stayed until 3:00 and had to leave due to the fact that I was freezing. I met a lovely group of ladies and had a nice time in any case. Another plus was that in order to fit the dogs in the car I had to take the air filters out.