This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at DePaul chapter.
Living in a city, there is a definite lack of that familiar and welcomed canine influence that every college student needs. The wonderful presence of ponderous, posh, peppy (and everything in between) Lincoln Park-area dogs combined with this love for dogs drove freshman DePaul students Simon Handmaker and Emily Dunn to create and run a Facebook page dedicated to spotting and displaying these lovable creatures for students and dog-lovers alike to admire amidst hectic Chicago days.
The Facebook page “DePaul Dogspotting,” created in September of 2015, has now accumulated a community of 471 members (as of October 15, 2015) and seems to have a promising, dog-filled future ahead.
Q: How did the Dogspotting page start?
Emily: It was a pretty much complete and utter joke, to be honest.
Simon: That’s not something we should tell people!
Emily: Well it started between friends, sitting at a table on the quad. We had always joked, saying, “Oh we should start a page where people post photos of dogs!”
Simon: I saw that [my friend] Jim was on like the ACTUAL Dogspotting Facebook page, which is like a worldwide thing, and I turned to him and was like “Yo. We gotta start a DePaul Dogspotting page.” And he was like “That would be AWESOME.” So we talked about it as a joke like “Oh yeah, we need to start that.” And then one day it’s me and Emily…
Emily: We were sitting on the quad and I pulled out my phone like “OKAY we are doing this right now!” And we set it up and it really blew up.
Simon: We didn’t expect it. We spammed links onto the Class of 2019 DePaul Facebook page and it got a lot of members really quickly.
Emily: It’s been like a “snowball effect”.
Q: So what was the influence for the page? What drove you to do it?
Simon: We just like dogs. Honestly, Emily and I and all of the other admins just really like dogs. We were just kind of like “Yo. Dogs.”
Q: On campus, where is the best place to spot some dogs?
Simon and Emily: QUAD.
Simon: Absolutely.
Emily: Or that area, the corner near the quad by the student center; people always walk their dogs around there. You can almost TRACK them.
Simon: Or along Belden, or municipal areas where people go right up against the campus. That’s a good place.
Q: What’s your favorite dog that you have either spotted, or seen on the page?
Simon: BUDDY. The huge bear-like saint Bernard. He’s a god.
Q: Do you guys have dogs of your own?
Emily: I do! Her name is Molly, she’s a yellow lab and she’s a princess. I miss her!
Simon: …I have cats.
Q: What should DePaul students gain from the Dogspotting page?
Emily: It definitely helps brighten people’s days; I don’t know anything that doesn’t make people smile like pictures of animals! If I’m ever having a really bad day, I’ll just get on the Facebook page and scroll and be like “Okay! Even though these posts are three weeks old, they are still cute!” It still works for me!
Simon: I would say the one thing that I’ve really taken away from the Dogspotting pages is, you know, “Don’t do drugs and eat your vegetables.”