When her husband came across a flyer for a dog friendly race last year, she started doing research online to find races near her.
“None of the major race databases that I contacted was currently keeping track of which races are dog friendly,” says Lavins-Merillat. “I pitched the idea of a research study focusing on the current state of dog-friendly events in the U.S.A. and potential health benefits to humans to my boss at RunRepeat, and six months later, I found myself swamped with work. In general, my research focuses on understanding the psychology behind why people might want to exercise and why they don’t — I examine ways to help motivate people to live healthier lives. With dog-friendly events, I saw the potential for a link between the social aspects of a dog-friendly event and the physical/health benefits.”
She’s recently published a research paper about dog runs/walks in the country and has even developed an online, mobile phone friendly “race finder” tool to make it easy to find dog friendly runs/walks near you. She says that Ohio has the second largest number of dog-friendly walk/runs in the country, many of which occur in the Cleveland area.
“It’s snowballed into this wonderful thing, and I can barely keep up with the research,” says Lavins-Merillat, who just ran a local dog-centered race with her husband and their pup Boston this past weekend. “I’ve been getting a lot of great feedback from people about the site.”
This article appears in May 16-22, 2018.
