There are people that I see regularly but I don’t know.  People passed on the street, fellow dog walkers, street people and vagrants.  The colourful and the ordinary, familiar but unknown.  If our paths cross often enough, names might be exchanged, but usually just first names.  More frequently though it is a referential name: trench coat man, dancing guy, the lady with the pugs, or I end up learning the dogs’ names but not the person on the other end of the leash.  When I go for a while without a sighting I begin to wonder and worry.  It might just be a change in schedule or routine, relocation, changing seasons, or illness, accident, a change in ability.  I have no way of knowing.  This morning I met up again with one of my formally regular people.  There was a funny little bit of happiness that I felt knowing that nothing horrible had happened.  That she was still ticking along.  Her daily challenges haven’t got the better of her, she only had a schedule and location change.  If there hadn’t been a huge potential of four leashes getting tangled, and one or both of us getting pulled over I might have gone in for a hug…