Do Dogs Increase Your Chance Of Getting Dates?

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Photo: Courtesy of Maria Del Russo.

As a single girl living in a big city, I mainly find dates on apps. It's easy, it's fast, and I can do most of the legwork while siting on my couch in my pyjamas. But that isn't to say I don't enjoy meeting people IRL. I live for a meet-cute, and am always searching for ways to strike up conversations with attractive men I see in public. I once tried to pick up a guy at Whole Foods by helping him test whether or not a melon was ripe. (It didn't work.)

But a few weeks ago, while walking past a dog park with my cousin and her sons, I offhandedly mentioned that dogs are the ultimate icebreakers. "It's like throwing chum into the ocean," I told her. "If you've got a dog on a leash, I swear, people just swarm you. It's got to be the best way to pick up guys."

Soon after, my coworkers and I were chatting about dogs in the office (as we do), and my editor suggested I take this theory to the streets. And thus, an experiment was born.

For as many weekend days as it took, I'd borrow dogs of varying shapes and sizes, and walk them around different NYC neighbourhoods too see which one got me the most, uh, tail. If a guy I met asked any questions about "my" dog, I'd tell him that I was walking a dog for a friend, so if we did wind up dating, he wouldn't ask where the hell the pup went. But otherwise, there were zero rules to this — I just had to secure some dogs and get to walking.

Scroll on to see if my theory was fur real or not. Okay, no more dog puns — but there are plenty of adorable pups, ahead.

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