For years now after our Thursday hockey game a bunch of us head over to one of our favorite dog-friendly dive bars, The Tempest. Now because it’s dog-friendly I, of course, bring a dog (sometimes 2). My dogs, and I don’t mean to brag, attract attention. Marmalade cuts a wide path at 165 pounds of muscle and Tali is a petite 110-pound 1-year-old. They get lots of looks when we walk into the bar and the number of people who come over and want to pet the dogs, want to take a picture with them, and ask the same 5 questions is endless.
Now I know where I’m heading after last call (same place for the past 27 years) but that’s not the case for everyone on the team, and I’ve been known to prep some of the folks without designated destinations with the answers to the standard questions they’ll get and have them hold the leash(es). Sure, we know this is a bit disingenuous, but really no one gets hurt and if things progress the dogs are still leaving with me!
Who knew there was a term for our deception: Dogfishing! Turns out that while we are going low tech at our local dive bar, others were taking our idea to the world of online dating!
The San Francisco Chronical ran a story on dogfishing where online daters (or I guess prospective daters) pose with dogs that aren’t their own or use random pictures of dogs to lure someone in. Frankly, that sounds a whole lot creepier than a bunch of hockey players hanging out in a dive bar holding onto a leash to a dog that isn’t theirs.
So, are we practicing a bit of self-delusion? Are we no better than those online folks Dogfishing or is the fact that we are actually there with the dogs better? And why is it Dogfishing? No one is fishing for dogs – it’s more like dog-baiting or dog-wing-manning.
More importantly, don’t you wish you had Tali and Marmalade to break the ice for you next time you went out?
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