As dating apps become a more widespread way to find love, finding a partner who is equally as enthusiastic about the four-legged furry companion becomes more important to dog owners.

Leigh Isaacson, Co-Founder and CEO of Dig, was inspired to build a dating app that connects fellow dog lovers with one another after her younger sister’s failed relationship with her non-dog loving partner.

 “My sister was dating a guy who tried to be a dog person for her, but by the end of the relationship he didn’t want the dog in the apartment, and if he did, he would put towels down on the couch, so the dog didn’t touch anything,” Isaacson said. “She realized two things, not only was this bad for a long-term relationship for her, but the dog itself was getting left at home.”

Isaacson wanted to help other canine loving singles cut to the chase and help them find lifelong partners who shared similar values through Dig.

 “People don’t want to have a general, giant list of people where you can swipe forever,” Isaacson said. “They want to find what matters to them.”

Having a dating app specifically made for dog lovers is an attractive prospect to many pooch owners as they believe it can help eliminate people who are not truly passionate about dogs.

Studies have shown that many people will use dogs in their online dating profiles to attract more dates, making it difficult to identify who the true dog lovers are. 

Katie Woods says having a dating app specifically made for dog owners and lovers can help eliminate people who are not truly passionate about dogs. Photo by Bessie Liu

Katie Wood, a Brooklynite and dog mom to 13-year-old Cockapoo, Cricket, said  that she and many of her friends have met many guys who aren’t really into dogs, but will use a dog in their online dating profile to attract more matches.

“If you talk to the guys and they’re like, oh yeah it was my friends’ dog three years ago, well that’s false advertising,” Wood said. “I just think that it probably weeds out a lot of the weirdos. If you can own and love a dog, you’re better suited to interact with people too. You know there’s a lot of weirdos out on those places, anything you can do to widdle that down a little bit is probably useful.”

Although the intention behind bringing together people who love dogs may sound good in theory, when put into practice, it doesn’t always work out as planned.

Boris Berenberg who was intrigued by the idea of a dating app that bonded people through their mutual love for dogs, used Dig for a short period of time. 

“I met someone and we dated for a while,”Berenberg said.“It was cool, her dog was sweet. Ended up not using the app much after that since I was dating her,”. “Didn’t reinstall it when the relationship ended.”

 Despite his unsuccessful relationship, Berenberg thought that the idea of creating a dating app for dog lovers was good. 

 “I think it was a fun idea, and I would recommend people to try it out,” he said.

Not all Dig users share the same sentiment as Berenberg and many of them have publicly voiced their concerns on an online review forum for the app.

Jennifer Madaj wrote that the dating profiles needed to be more informative to truly help people find a potential soulmate. 

“The concept is a good one and I had really high hopes for this,”Madaj said in her review. “Obviously being a dog lover is extremely important, but it’s not the sole requirement to making a good match with someone. More basic information about each match and the kind of match they’re looking for should be provided,” 

Other users are concerned with the dating apps limited reach. 

“The experience is decent, but there’s all of about ten people on it in my area so I literally ran out of profiles to look at in under an hour,” Jimmy Ludiwg, a Dig user, wrote. 

Aware of these challenges, Isaacson and her sister are hoping to get the word out through organising large scale, dog friendly events. These events intend to bring together organizations and groups who work in the pet business, providing them a platform to network with one another in person.

Lisa Lippman is a veterinarian who has attended many Dig events where she has met valuable connections. 

“There are so many photo and networking opportunities.” Lippman said. “I met a dog walking company that I became really good friends with and that I refer to all the time.” 

A single dog lovers speed dating event, where owners bring along their pooches to sniff out a potential partner. Photo courtesy to Dig.

 In person speed dating events provide an opportunity for the dating app users to bring their dogs along and sniff out a potential partner. 

Even though Lippman herself did not participate in the speed dating event, as she was a vendor, she brought along her friend who did.

“I had a friend who I asked to come, a guy who came and participated in the speed dating event,” Lippman said. “He went on one date, but I don’t think it was like magic, unfortunately.”

 Although there was no spark between Lippman’s friend and any of the other singles who attended the event, she believed it was still an enjoyable experience for them both. 

 “The networking is phenomenal and it becomes a small safe in the city,” Lippman said. “I’ve definitely met a lot of people who I would stay in touch with.”

Many Dig event participants and app users are in their 30s and are first time dog owners, but the app is also attracting many users from older age groups.

“The generation that we thought [the app] was going to be the most popular was right when you get your first dog,” Isaacson said. “It’s definitely the most active group on the app for sure, but we’re seeing a huge amount of 55 plus, especially recent divorcees, a lot more women than men, really coming and turning to Dig.”

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Eve Denton may work full-time for a technology company, but the single 23-year-old has never trusted the Internet to direct her love life. Denton has always steered away from dating sites like OkCupid and Match.com , scared she’ll encounter “creepers” and “randos” who will inundate her inbox with inappropriate messages.

Then, a few months ago, Denton discovered Tinder, a dating app for smartphones that came out last August, and has become hugely popular in 2013. Soon after, Denton embarked on her first-ever online date—and was shocked by how normal and pleasant was.

“I was disappointed by how well it went,” Denton joked. “I was expecting a much creepier experience.”

In a world of PlentyofFish murderers and Craiglist killers, Tinder has been a welcome relief to safety-conscious singles. Here’s how it works: using GPS navigation and access to users’ Facebook accounts, the app can show you photos of potential romantic partners in your current geographical area. Then, you can choose which way to swipe a “match’s” photo—right for hot, left for not.

But here’s the added security bonus: only when Tinder detects that two users have approved each other’s photos, can those two users message one another; that means more privacy, and fewer scary messages from uninvited strangers. Additionally, Tinder can also show you if you have any mutual Facebook friends with potential matches, making it easy to verify if your soon-to-be sweethearts are who they say they are.

“It’s like, ‘Oh, we have a mutual friend—you can’t be a serial killer,” Denton said.

Denton’s successful Tinder match was initiated last February, when the San Francisco native was visiting home one weekend (Denton currently works for an electronic medical records company in Madison, Wis.) Bored one morning at home, Denton spent a few hours sorting through Tinder profiles. A few days later, back in Wisconsin, Denton heard from one of the men she’d approved—he had approved her, too, so it was safe for them to message one another. He asked Denton if she wanted to go for drinks the next time she was in San Francisco, and she said yes.

“We met up for drinks, and ended up spending like five hours out, and had like a really great time,” Denton said. “We had a ton in common. He was really interesting. It was great. I have no regrets about doing [a Tinder date], and if I actually lived in San Francisco it could have turned into something more.”

Steve Dean, 24, is a professional online dating consultant and the creator of dateworking.com, a dating advice blog. Before Tinder, he said that most dating apps were potentially dangerous, especially for female users.

“A lot of the dating apps that were available were missing that really critical element of, can you trust that the person is real?” Dean said. “There’s nothing to make me think that you didn’t just create this profile by stealing someone else’s photo, and you’re still going to rape me as soon as I meet you.”

Now, Dean praises Tinder for its added safety measures, and said he recommends it to plenty of clients.

“[With Tinder], you have to log into Facebook to use the app,” Dean said. “You’re immediately accountable to at least any mutual friends you have, and the fact that you can see them right on the app, it makes it so much less creepy. You can’t be creepy when you have friends in common on Facebook.”

But Dean doesn’t just prescribe Tinder to his clients; in January, he downloaded the app to his own smartphone. At first, having just moved to New York from his native Philadelphia, he used the app to meet friends. Now, like his clients, he’s using Tinder to find dates.

“I went on a date with a girl recently, from Tinder, [and] it was her first ever date in life,” Dean said. “It was really fun. We had Thai food, and then we went up to my office actually to play Ping-Pong. Then we met up a couple times after that, and we’re planning another meet up. We’re just probably going to continue hanging out…She’s getting better at Ping-Pong,” he added.

But users beware: no dating app is completely perv-proof. Just ask Raquel Pierre, 20, a junior at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va. Her Tinder terror happened one weekend at college, when her roommate invited a Tinder match from a nearby military school to come hang out at JMU. The roommate told the Tinder match to bring three friends with him—enough for Pierre and her other two roommates.

“Already it was just getting kind of like too set up for me,” Pierre said. “There were four guys and four girls.”

The eight students started drinking at the house Pierre shared with her three roommates. Pierre said it felt weird how the couples started “pairing off” with each other—she wasn’t into random hookups.

“This one guy started zeroing in on me,” she said. “If I would walk two steps, he’d be two steps right behind me, and he was just kind of creepy and making weird eye contact across the room from me, and trying to dance with me and I’d be running away.”

Later that night, Pierre was disgusted to discover that the guy expected to sleep in her room. Panicked, she fled the living room and locked herself in her bedroom to protect herself from his aggressive advances.

“I was like shaking in my room, freaking out—like what do I do?” Pierre said. She was thinking to herself, “There’s no way I can sleep here without feeling scared throughout the night that he’s going to come banging on my door angrily.”

Eventually, Pierre phoned a friend and asked her to come pick her up, so she wouldn’t have to spend the night at home, scared for her own safety.

“I had to walk past him to leave the apartment,” Pierre said. “I was like really scared, but I just like, locked my door, and just booked it out the front door.”

Pierre tells her Tinder nightmare

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Pierre firmly insisted that there would be no more dating apps in her future. Still, she understands that though it didn’t work out for her, Tinder can still help some people find romance. Of the four male students who came to her house that night, two are still in contact with two of her roommates. One of her roommates took her partner to her sorority’s formal; the other couple, Pierre said, is about to become monogamous.

Safety concerns aside, neither Denton, Dean, nor Pierre can deny that “Tindering”—slang for the act of swiping through matches’ photos—is strangely fun.

“[People] like very quickly and superficially rating people—flicking through people, and having that cool little effect of faces swishing past,” Dean said. “That’s why people are drawn to it. You can just be walking down the street Tindering. It’s super easy, and you get a lot of validation when someone likes you back. “

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“Mary Hickey, 65, and her boyfriend Joe pose for a photo on Roosevelt Island about a month and a half ago. Hickey met Joe at a walking tour of the Flatiron District last spring—an event she organized on Meetup.com. Photo courtesy of Mary Hickey.

When Mary Hickey showed up to a Meetup.com walking tour of the Flatiron District last spring, she never expected she’d come home with a boyfriend. Instead, she met Joe. They’ve been dating since April, enjoy skiing and dancing and are completely smitten with one another.

“We had brunch and then we were going out to walk, and he kind of sat himself down next to me and we started to talk, and as they say the rest is history,” Hickey said.

Their story might sound like young love, but he’s 58. She’s 65.

Hickey, a Chelsea resident, said her success is all thanks to Meetup.com—a social networking site that allows users to form groups and plan “Meet-ups” based on the groups’ common interests. With the difficulties that straight, single women over 60 often face when it comes to finding relationships, many are attempting to use Meetup.com as a means of meeting potential romantic partners.

Hickey divorced her ex-husband 16 years ago. Before she met Joe on the walking tour Meetup, Hickey—like other single women her age—had to consider whether she would still be desirable to the single men her age.

“To some extent, I wasn’t interested, but I didn’t think anybody at this stage would really be interested in me either,” she said.

According to Marian Banker, 73, of Midtown Manhattan, Hickey’s initial concerns are all-too-common for single women over 60—and that’s a problem. That’s why last spring, Banker started a 60-and-over Meetup.com group called The Platinums. She wanted to show her fellow single seniors that it’s never too late to enter the dating game.

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Banker says single senior women aren’t too old to date again.

Since last spring, Banker’s group has gathered 178 members. The senior singles regularly gather at restaurants in New York City, where they collectively dine and share their ideas on pre-determined discussion topics.

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Banker explains the purpose of The Platinums

There’s one problem, though, that makes successful love stories like Hickey’s hard to come by, even with the help of Meetup.com: most senior women are looking to date men their age, but lots of senior men still have their sights set on younger women. The result, according to Ken Kaplan, 65,who founded a seniors’ Meetup group called Alive and Kickin’,is that the turnout to most single seniors’ events is overwhelmingly female.

“Older men still want younger women,” Kaplan said. “We have six women in the group for every man. I computed it once.”

Kaplan, who works as a real estate agent in Parsippany, N.J., even added that he’d rather date a younger woman than someone his own age.

Jan Chambers, 62, of Parsippany, N.J., can testify for the gender disparity. Despite being an active member of Kaplan’s Alive and Kickin’ group, Chambers is currently having trouble finding the long-term life partner she so desires.

“Unfortunately, there is a lot of Ageist attitude with older men,” she said. “Many many many single women, [and] very few men come. [It’s] easier for men to date when they are older. If they are at all attractive and have any money, they apparently do not need Meetup groups.”

But Hickey insists there are senior men out there who are comfortable dating women their own age, or older.

“Joe is different in that regard,” she said. “He’ll say, ‘What will I have in common with someone who’s 30? Or 40, even?’ I don’t want anybody who has small kids—I’m finished with that. And neither does he. We’re in kind of the same stage of our lives at this point.”

But despite the gender imbalances that undeniably plague single seniors’ Meetups, both Chambers and Hickey firmly asserted that they would still rather try their luck on Meetup.com than on regular dating sites like Match.com and eHarmony.

“I really was not into the whole online dating scene at all,” Hickey said. “[Meetup.com] is just a nice way to meet with people who, by the nature of the fact that they’re showing up for an event, are interested in something that you’re interested in as well. You don’t go through the “winking” and emailing and then meeting for coffee. It’s not three times removed.”

Dating isn’t easy for today’s Golden Girls; they’re up against rampant Ageism, as well as their own personal trepidation about entering singlehood so comparatively late in life.

Still, with tools like Meetup.com, Hickey knows that senior women can find the over-60 men of their dreams (she pointed out that she and Joe would be spending Valentine’s Day together on a romantic Cape May getaway). Sure, it’s a challenge (Hickey repeatedly stated how surprised she was to have met Joe), but the potential romantic rewards make it worth the Ageist, gender imbalanced journey.

In the words of Banker, creator of The Platinums, “If not now, when?”

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