Have you ever seen a dog somewhere in public and just wanted to shout with excitement? Me too. Every day.
That's why when I stumbled upon Dogspotting I knew I had found my people. It's a Facebook page dedicated to people posting pictures of dogs they see in their everyday life. So basically, it's heaven. The page allows users to give "points" to dogs, with bonus points available for floppy ears, good listening, and all around wonder.
We spoke with Reid Paskiewicz, VP of Dogspotting, which has grown into a huge company.
"I started around 2008 with the concept creator John Savoia introduced it in a troll forum I frequented. I was instantly hooked and it became my Lifestyle," Paskiewicz said via email to Shared. "It made perfect sense to me that if you are going to be outside and seeing random dogs all day, you might as well start getting points and sharing great spots with friends for bragging rights and feedback. Also seeing other members Dogspots was exciting and it was great to be part of such a positive community celebrating dogs."
There are some rules to the page which every member must agree to before joining.
"We have multiple groups that have different sets of rules but all of them have the basics of no spam or unauthorized solicitation, no memes or shared content (original content only), no pressing issues (politics or dog debates), and to Be Excellent To Each Other while interacting in the comments," Paskiewicz says.
The basic ground rules are:
- Respect the Admins
- Respect the Rules
- Respect Others
- No Service Dogs
- Respect Privacy
- No Selfies
- No 'Famous' Dogs
- No Non-Dog Posts
- Dog Parks, Dog Functions, Pet Stores, or anywhere else dogs are expected are off limits
- No Drama
- No Memes
The page is rapidly growing, which has allowed the company to develop a Dogspotting app as well.
But it's not just the Facebook page where you can see the dogs!
"We have grown from a few dozen folks from 2008-2013 to almost now 670k from 2014-present," Paskiewicz told Shared. "The app is constantly changing features to upgrade the experience and right now you can use the app to submit a Dogspot with a score per the point ruleset (and maybe make the point leaderboard with enough dogs), or bypass the game and post a dog or your own dog on the Dogspotting Society feed, which is just a big fun dog club. Additionally you can give "pats" to any dog by tapping it and dog with the most pats are featured in the Top Spots feed. You can still post any dog uploaded to the app directly to the Facebook groups, so this will enhance the spotting for core Facebook members by adding a bunch of cool tools."
As for what Dogspotting wants to do in the future, it's pretty simple.
"Continue to grow our positive community across social media and keep the dogs flowing to our members," Paskiewicz told Shared. "We have some great opportunities right now working with Facebook groups and communities team to make things even better with new tools and features. Facebook has been great at listening to feedback and interacting with group admins. I have high expectations we will hit 1 million members next year. "
We asked Paskiewicz about his favorite dogs so far, and the answer did not disappoint.
"This is an almost impossible question but for my personal fave I have to go with the sidecar pugs Lolo and Yoda who are alternately spotted dozens of times a year in downtown Vancouver. I collect them all."
These were some of our personal favorites!
If you would like to join Dogspotting, you can do so here!
Taking inspiration from Dogspotting, we chose to spot our own dogs at the office...and they're pretty cute!
Takaani
Captain
Lola
Louis
Pess
Jerry
Amber
Winston
Lily
Gunther
Jax
Archie
Peanut
Odie
Will you be joining Dogspotting?