There seems to be no shortage of articles, studies, and think pieces about how modern life is changing the way we interact with one another. We order groceries without seeing another human, we have meals delivered to our doors, work from home and text instead of call. We can go through an entire day without having a meaningful interaction with another person and sometimes without much interaction with anyone at all.
Now, we’re hearing more about what all of this might be doing to us. There are conversations about loneliness and social isolation, but also about something that feels a little more subtle: Are we becoming less comfortable being around other people? Are we losing some of our willingness to engage? Is spontaneous human interaction starting to feel…awkward?
I see these stories and statistics and, honestly, they scare me a little. Not just because I worry about what they mean for society, but because I started to wonder: Am I part of the problem?
I work remotely, so I can go through most of my workday without seeing a coworker face-to-face. I have become very good at creating my own little bubble of productivity. Even so, I am an extrovert. Was my natural state of being slowly being drowned out by convenience?
Fortunately, I may have discovered an antidote, or at least one for consideration.
Enter: Two Foster Puppies
For eight weeks, I fostered two puppies. I knew fostering would save two lives, be rewarding, and bring some chaos into an otherwise orderly house. What I didn’t expect was that these puppies would completely change the way I interacted with my neighborhood.
I met more of my neighbors during those eight weeks than I had in all the years I had lived there. Suddenly, walks weren’t really walks; they were training walks.
And training walks are slow. Very slow.
There was no putting in my earbuds and heading out for a brisk walk while thinking about my next to-do list task. Instead, I was stopping every few feet. Someone would ask about the puppies, which gave me an opportunity to teach them proper introductions. The puppies wanted to say hello, and people wanted to stop and talk.
Neighbors who had probably seen me dozens of times before were suddenly introducing themselves. And interestingly, it wasn’t always because they wanted to adopt the puppies. They simply felt compelled to stop and say hello.
One of the best experiences was meeting a neighbor who was walking her own foster dog. I had passed her countless times before, but one day she saw the puppies and we started talking. We compared notes about fostering and talked about the amazing work our rescue organizations were doing. Without the puppies, I’m not sure we ever would have had that conversation. We celebrated together when both of our fosters found their new families!
The Puppies Left. The Connections Didn’t.
Eventually, both puppies found their forever homes, amazingly, both right in my neighborhood. I suppose the pessimists could say, “Well, that’s nice, but now the puppies are gone. Nobody is going to talk to you anymore.”
They would be wrong.
Neighbors still ask me how the puppies are doing. I’ve run into people I’ve met on the trails, and they tell me about seeing the puppies or hearing how they’re doing. People I didn’t know before now know me. They know my dog. They know I foster.
And something else changed, too: I rarely put in my headphones when I go outside anymore. Inevitably, I’ll see someone I know, and I don’t want to miss the opportunity to say hello.
That’s the part I didn’t expect. The puppies didn’t just create eight weeks of interaction. They created community.
Maybe Animals Are the Bridge
We talk a lot in animal welfare about the impact animals have on the people who adopt them. We talk about companionship, mental health, physical activity, and the joy of having an animal greet you at the end of the day. But there is another benefit worth talking about: animals give us a reason to interact with one another.
A dog gives you something to talk about with the person on the trail. A foster puppy gives a neighbor a reason to stop. Volunteering introduces you to people you might never otherwise meet. Fostering, in particular, puts you in the middle of a community of people who care about something bigger than themselves.
My biggest takeaway from this experience is that animals don’t just connect us to them, they can connect us to each other.
As we continue to hear more about loneliness, social isolation, and the ways modern convenience may be changing our relationships with one another, I think it’s worth looking for simple ways to push back.
Go to the neighborhood gathering. Take the time to talk to the person you pass on the trail instead of rushing by. Leave the earbuds at home every once in a while and allow yourself to be open to those small, unexpected conversations that happen when we’re actually present in the world around us. Find a way to volunteer, get involved in your community, and, if you’re able, consider fostering an animal.
Yes, fostering saves lives and is adorable. But fostering can also get you out of your house, into your community, and talking to people you otherwise might never have met. It can create connections in places you didn’t expect to find them and remind you that you’re not simply living near other people, you are part of a community with them.
Maybe that’s something we need now more than ever. Because sometimes the answer to a very complicated societal problem isn’t another formula for connection, another convenience, or another way to avoid interacting with the world around us. Sometimes, it might be surprisingly simple:
Go walk a dog.
You might just come home with a foster fail or, at the very least, a few new friends.