It's a Monday. Your paws dangle from the couch like furry little metronomes, until suddenly, you hear keys jangle, signaling the dreaded beginning of your human's workweek. The jangle is a Pavlov style beacon to take action, except your instinct is not to drool, but to sulk like your life depends on it.
"They can't leave if I look this cute," you think, eyes poised upward with a persuasive glimmer and glint. While your attempt at enticing the human to stay is ultimately futile, you do get a treat out of the performance, so not all is lost. But once the door shuts, leaving behind just the dull whir of silence, you're left to search for what to do with your life until the human returns from whatever could possibly be more important than you.
And so you do as the humans do when riding solo is just too hard to bear: you create a Tinder profile. But rather than wrapping up the process with just a few paw taps, your attempt grinds to a halt as you canvas your phone for the right photos, ones where you're not planted next to your more attractive and floofy friend.
"I can't do this," you think, "I'm just a dog."
No Scruffalupagus, you're not just a dog. You're an individual in your own right who deserves access to all that life has to offer, love and butt scratches included. And this is where I offer you my unsolicited advice, as a canine who's well versed in the endless swipe and gamble of the doggy dating app.
#1: Don't be afraid to get unflattering
Almost every pawvailable pup I know goes through the painstaking process of finding the right photo, but what I advise is mixing it up, and I don't mean getting scandalous by including a photo where your ears do the flippy thing and you look like a seal. What I'm saying is, include a variety of photos and don't be afraid to make some of the photos unflattering. I'm talking jowls flapping in the wind, drool flying every which way, the works, because face it: if you want to find a true pawtner, they're going to have to accept you in all your glory.
If you haven't fully grasped the picture yet, it's ok. Bored Panda just so happens to have some of the finest examples in the history of unflattering angles, ones that aren't just material for funny dog memes but are the perfect dose of truth for your budding partner:
#2: Wear your worst & best traits proud... literally.
Bandanas: tie-on cotton scarves used to make up for the fact that we're not wearing pants, like ever. The usefulness of these fabric triangles can however go far beyond just clothing the nakey; us pups can wield these unassuming accessories to market our unique pawsonalities on Tinder and the like. Fortunately, being the chief barketing officer of pet boutique Barkley & Wagz, a clothing store for the dog mom and fur baby too, I can fashion a personalized bandana that will say all the things you need to say with lightweight fabric & your choice of colors from navy to red, charcoal, hot pink, and more.
Shown above is Murphy in his Tinder's best (I don't recommend this one for Tinder's kinder cousin Bumble), an army green ensemble whose customized message is as honest as can be: he's a neutered stage five clinger and kind of a jerk-face. Being the difficult date that he is, he abides by a motto that's revered by trout-holding man-splainers everywhere: looking for a good time, not a long time. I'm hoping that the message hiding behind his ruff exterior will resonate with you and that is that honesty is the best pawlicy. If you're going to get a dating advertisement custom made, you might as well have it encapsulate the best and worst of you, because that is after all what you will reveal 6-8 weeks into your new relationship.
Hinge's dating ethos got it right by requiring suitors to start conversations in a match-focused fashion; users are required to comment on an aspect of their match's profile in order for a chat to even take place. So while your human has made it clear that you're the center of the universe (and you kinda are), your date is the center of the universe as well. You are after all, dogs.
So what does the pup say? Well, you can comment on their most singular feature, whether it be their dog ears, gloriously floofy Doodle fur, impressively sized bear paws, or glistening snoot. But what I recommend even more than the features focused method is the traits centered tactic. Scour their profile and extract the bits and pieces of them that, put next to you, make you two a likeminded match. And once you're armed with these tidbits, ask them questions like so:
- I see that you too like licking loudly and furiously at 2 am to the point that you wake your sleeping human. How'd you get into that?
- I noticed you aren't afraid to share your goose poop lunches on Instagram. You wanna sniff out the best spots for goose poo together?
- So you're an avid counter surfer... We could make a great team as I have 5 years experience with ground crumb pawtrol! You in?
- OMG! Where did you get that Paw & Order dog raglan? That's my favorite show... *Ominous music* "In New York City's war on cuteness, the worst criminal offenders are pursued by the detectives of the Major Case Pawtrol..."
Whatever route you take to make for a conversation that doesn't start and end with "How are u," the chief takeaway here is to make it pawsonal.
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Now that we've covered the big three of doggy dating 101, ask yourself this: "Do you still feel like 'just a dog'?" Or do you feel like a furry adonis donning a bow tie, top hat, and custom dating profile dog bandana, fully primed to swipe their way to love and goose poo? If it's the second, then I think you can tap your paws to the screen and find the Paw & Order watching counter surfer of your dreams.
Stay floofy my friends!
🐾,
Barkley