Social media has been part of life with my dog since before I even brought her home.
I first found my way to Dogstagram when my parents adopted a Siberian Husky during my second year of college. It started with simple photos captioned from Snort’s point of view (or at least what I imagined her voice would be — lots of misspellings, classic “doge” stuff) and slowly turned into a platform I actually valued.
In those early silly days, I got my first exposure to the idea that not every dog is indiscriminately social. I saw different creatures thriving in different lifestyles. I realized dog training didn’t have to be some complicated process reserved for working animals but could be part of daily pet life. These concepts sound basic to me now — of course we shouldn’t assume strange dogs want to be hugged, of course my experiences won’t perfectly mirror yours, of course every dog can benefit from some basic training — but at the time I’d never considered them.
And it was Instagram that first put these realities in front of me. Instagram that presented them casually in the midst of social media entertainment. Instagram that planted seeds without ever making me feel like I’d been talked down to.
When I decided it was time to get a dog of my own two years later, I knew right away that I wanted to document our experiences on social media. I’d come to take the dog world more seriously by this point (in reality I was near the Peak of Mount Stupid, feeling like I had it all figured out) and approached our online presence with marginally more intention to match.
Two amazing things happened over the next year and a half.
The first was that I realized how incredibly naive I’d been. I quickly felt in over my head with Scout, and no amount of white knuckling could keep my fantasies of our life together from slipping away. What had I done? Was I some horrible fraud? Would our dog-human bond ever just simply feel okay?
The second was that I met an entire community of fellow owners going through similar things — and willing to talk about their struggles. Here I found encouragement and inspiration, here I could say “I see you”, here I could be seen.
This corner of Dog Instagram is the first place I experienced the importance of biological fulfillment firsthand. Today play is one of my greatest dog world passions! On social media I found reading recommendations I still count among my favorite titles. There Scout and I met friends who have our backs for the long haul.
I could, of course, have probably gotten all this outside of Instagram. I did broaden my scope — I sought information about canine cognition elsewhere and took in-person training classes and pioneered my own little book clubs — but I can’t guess how things would have played out if I’d never had this community to start with. By sharing in fellow owners’ experiences, I was able to gain more perspective more quickly than if I’d tried to go it alone (or just latched on to everything the first trainer I ever hired told me).
For this I will always love the online dog world.
But social media has been poisonous, too.
I’ve had to work — hard — to “undo” some of the effects of spending this much time on Instagram. The comparison game is my sworn enemy. I take a very deep breath when someone approaches me with unsolicited advice. I’m lucky Sean keeps me honest.
In this sense, I’m proud to say life with my dog would look exactly the same without social media. Today there is nothing I do with Scout purely so we can document it on Instagram. We live in a van because we love living in a van, we play tug because it fulfills us both, we share food because life is short, we train skills because they’re relevant to experiences we enjoy…
When I’m not sure about an activity, I ask myself how I’d feel if I could never tell anyone about it. Would I still be excited? Would I think it was worthwhile? Or would I turn away, quick footed, no regrets?
Some things do mostly have value in the sharing — in the connection with others — and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. But I want most of my answers to be a resounding “Yes, I want this. It is for me. It is for Scout. It is for no one else except maybe by happy accident, and that serendipity is something to celebrate but its absence isn’t something to mourn.”
If I had never gotten on Instagram, would I have been exposed to the ideas that have deeply shaped Scout’s life? Would I have been encouraged to keep trying new things when I thought we were screwed? Would I have come to understand that I am not crazy for loving my dog so much? Would I have found like-minded people to be part of this journey?
Maybe. (Probably, even, because I’m not sure I’d have settled for anything else.) But our experience has been so much more than “silly little photo sharing”. If social media fell off the face of the planet today, I’d live with Scout the same way tomorrow. But if we’d never had social media, I can’t be certain of who or how or where we’d be.
