Building an all-inclusive insta-dog community

Note: As of 2015, Somewhitecookie and Weliveinaflat are no longer admins of the Dogs of Instagram Singapore facebook group. :P

I am admin of the Dogs of Instagram Facebook group and the @dogsofinstasg account with the following blogs/IGers – mangothesheltie and somewhitecookie.

When Mango’s human first created our Dogs of Instagram Facebook group. Her idea was that this was a common space for the Singapore Dog Instagram community to have a communal chat group. Conversations were happening all over the place on individual IG accounts and DMs, etc and if we want to go out as a group, it’s just difficult to manage such conversations on IG and/or watsapp. You can read more about her thoughts here.

I was never active on Facebook or in groups, so you can imagine we are all learning along the way.

Our activities so far

To date, Donna has gone to some informal outings organised by individual members of the group, such as:

Cookie’s birthday party

A morning walk along the Green Corridor and

A mid-autumn BBQ party that I co-hosted.

But these are all small, informal outings to celebrate birthdays, recee the trails/route for official events or just inpromptu gatherings to hang out with dogs.

Our first official group event

We finally had our first official group event invitation extended to all over 100 members of the group. The outing was Cycling at Punggol Settlement. Fifteen dogs attended the event and we’re really pleased because less people than that accepted the invite.

Our next official events are the Halloween Picnic and Walk and our Christmas Party. The numbers of people indicating they’ll attend so far are good, but you know, as humans we always hope it’s better.

Group goals and objectives

At the end of the day, our Goal is to provide opportunities for all our dogs to mingle with all breeds of dogs. We are not a breed-specific dog group and we are proud of that.

To support this goal, we have been doing the following:

• Organised one event per month so meetups are consistent
• Organised a mix of different events to give all dogs equal opportunity to attend.
• A new photo contest theme every two weeks to encourage owners to share and learn more about each other’s dogs online, so we have topics to break the ice with when we have face-to-face meetings during events.
• Provide a group space online where members are more than welcome to chat and organise their own informal small group outings

While we say we are an all-breed group, sometimes, the photos can be misleading. There will be times where more of a certain type of dog attends an event, and then we may look like a Sheltie dog group or a Japanese Spitz group. We try to be all breed inclusive, but we can only be if owners of different breeds are interested to attend the specific events we organise.

A cycling activity may be more interesting to medium and big dog breeds that have lower risks of hip and elbow dysplasia. Small dog owners may not be interested in the active lifestyles that bigger dog owners prefer. There are a 101 reasons why people attend or do not attend events.

We can provide the opportunities, but dog owners themselves need to want to attend and mingle in order to help make the events a success. I am quiet and introvert by nature, so I guess, we humans can learn a lot from the dogs that aren’t shy.  Haha!

So see you at our next event, and help spread the way to your other dog lover insta-friends so we can see more breeds around! ;)