That people are dying on our roads due to phone addiction hasn’t seemed to make anything change. But no one really cares about what happens to other humans. That’s why I think I’ve finally found a wakeup call about the state of phone addiction in America.
It may disturb the reader to learn that in this picture, out of the three dogs wanting to play with the ball I’m holding, only one dog will be thrown a ball.
My dog’s favorite game is catching the ball. His second favorite game is fetching. So I spend a lot of time at the dog park with a ball in my hand. There’s something about holding a ball at a dog park that really makes you a lot of friends. Every time I go, there’s always a small to large crowd of dogs waiting for me to throw the ball.
It always makes me wonder why their owners don’t come throw a ball with them. Today I found the answer. Phone addiction.
I was playing catch with Finn when a husky came running up to me. After watching us play catch for about 5 minutes it tried barking at me to get the ball. I then heard someone yell“quiet”. I turned and saw a person about fifty feet away sitting in the shade on their phone. They spent the rest of the time I was there in the same spot paying absolutely no attention to their dog. I felt bad that the dog got yelled at. Sure it wasn’t good behavior but it’s hard to blame a dog whose owner is that disengaged for having some bad habits.
It’s a trend I’ve noticed since getting a dog. I live right next to a big dog walking street and dog park so I’ve gotten a lot of opportunities to observe how people interact with their dogs. Dog walking and dog parking are absentee activities for a good chunk of people. I’m not really sure how people manage to walk the dog and use their phone at the same but somehow they manage to. The dog park is even worse. People get the dog inside and then head to a table and use their phone while their dog plays.
It makes me sad as walking and the dog park are such great times to bond with your dog and have fun with it. Let alone the part where you really shouldn’t let your dog play with other dogs totally unsupervised (I’ve seen dog fights break out where some dogs owner is nowhere to be found) it’s great for your relationship with the dog for you to be part of the fun. If you just dump your dog in the park and go ignore it, all you are is the thing that ends the fun at the end of the session when you take them out.
Personally I want my dog to see me as fun. Since I started playing games with him I’ve had way more control over him at the dog park as he knows that leaving a dog and coming along with me is not the end of the good times. I really can see the difference in the way he acts at the dog park and it warms my heart.
This is why every time a dog comes and looks at me for the ball while we play catch I just feel guilty. I’m playing with my dog and I can’t be the source of ball for every phone orphaned dog at the dog park. Sure I toss out a few for them but it’s not the same as what I do for my dog.
Aside from just that I feel bad the dogs don’t get to play, it makes me sad that our phones are more important to us now than our dogs. I think it’s a reasonably common opinion these days that phones are bad for how we socialize with humans but I really didn’t realize until I got a dog how much it had frayed the fibers of our relationships with our dogs too. In a way it’s more tragic to me than that phones have broken our ability to be with people. I know how silly it is that we take what happens to dogs more seriously than what happens to humans but I can’t help but feel it.
So really if you won’t put away your phone because it will help your relationship with your partner, because it may save someones life while your driving, or because it’s making you a less interesting person, at least put it away for your dog.