Dog Walk-ING

Today, September 21st the A-Team decided it was time to do our first activity, dog walk-ING. One may ask just exactly how we came up with this slightly unique idea, well it was the result of thinking "outside the box and inside the quad" during our business meeting. After suggesting many unoriginal ideas we brainstormed activities we could do on the quad, finally resulting in our idea to go dog walk-ING. We all determined that this activity would be a great bonding experience for the simple reason that we had no idea exactly how to navigate the task, but we knew together we would find a way. 

Waking up to such a beautiful day and having free time due to class cancellation we decided dog walk-ING would be the perfect task to check off the list. We all gathered in Carrier Library to determine how to accomplish our activity. Courtney and Katelynn being from Pennsylvania, Matt being from New York, Lauren being from North Carolina, and Bryan being a town in Virginia relatively far from JMU we knew it would be impossible for us to use our own dogs, so we decided to think of people we knew on campus who owned dogs that we could borrow. After coming up empty handed on dog owners we decided to venture to the quad and to be bold and ask to borrow the dog of the next dog walker we saw. Although we felt extremely creepy for basically staring at every person to walk through the quad, after about ten minutes we finally came across a man walking his adorable dog Vader. 

Bryan volunteered to be the first person to approach the man so that we did not overwhelm him with a group of five freshmen running at him to ask to borrow his dog. The man kindly said it would be not a problem and even volunteered to take the pictures! While we were walking and playing with Vader, the 1 year old rescued St. Bernard mix, the group learned that each of the members had dogs back at home and playing with Vader immediately brought their dogs to mind. Bryan even stated that he, "can't wait to see his dogs when he gets home." Overall, through this activity we learned a lot about each other. Bryan is very outgoing and has no problem talking to any passerby, Courtney and Katelynn loved letting loose and playing like little kids with Vader, Lauren has so many dogs at home that she's run out of space and has to keep one at a friends, and Matt has much more of an interest walking his dog rather than playing with him. All in all we are extremely happy we participated in this activity because we were all able to have some fun, all with the help of our new friend Vader.