Love Dogs, Love Nature: Rethinking Environmental Responsibility Through Everyday Dog-Walking Practices

Dog walking is one of the most common ways people engage with nature in the UK, yet its ecological and social dynamics remain underexamined. With over 13 million dogs in British households, dog walking significantly shapes encounters with rural and peri-urban landscapes. Drawing on 40 hours of field observation and a deliberative workshop with land managers, farmers, and conservation practitioners in the Surrey Hills National Landscape, this paper examines dog walking as a multispecies practice shaped by care, responsibility, and governance. The findings show that dog walking supports wellbeing and sociability while also generating environmental pressures such as missed waste, wildlife disturbance, and livestock conflict. These impacts arise less from deliberate neglect than from distraction, social absorption, infrastructure, and dogs’ agency. The paper argues for practice-sensitive, relational approaches to environmental governance that better support multispecies coexistence.