Day 22: Walking Dogs

By Kaler Carpenter

Day 22 of 30 Days of Kindness was Walking Dogs, and for this act of kindness, we extended the love of God to mammals who instinctively know how to show love better than many of us.

This AoK was another activity that required some quick thinking on our part. To promote this event we had a sign out front, a blast on social media, this blog, a mention in the newspaper community events page, and  hundreds of 30 Days of Kindness Calenders that we passed out during days 1-21, yet, despite our best promotional efforts, nobody arranged for us to walk their dogs.

Determined to make all 30 Days happen, I took advantage of the fact that our church is located in the middle of a residential neighborhood and proceeded to walk the streets looking for dogs to walk. It only took me two houses before I found a neighbor that was sitting on her porch with two black labs. I introduced myself and offered to walk her dogs for free. The owners seemed happy to let me, and the dogs seemed even happier to be challenged with my brisk walking pace.

I was able to find a dog for Laura to walk by approaching another neighbor who we knew had recently purchased a new shih tzu; and while Laura was walking black lab #2 from neighbor #1, I remembered that another neighbor that I met while inviting people to the 6th Ward block party in May, had a rather large white dog named Bear. While walking black lab #1, I knocked on her door and asked if she was up for a free dog walk.

As fun as it was for two cat owners to spend an evening walking dogs, it was even more fun to surprise our neighbors with a knock on their door and tell them that we wanted to walk their dogs as a way to show God's love. Sure enough, every interaction led to a great conversation about the church, and I think we ultimately spent more time talking with our neighbors than we did walking dogs--which is kind of the point.