About the Writer

Welcome to Out Walking the Dog.  I’m delighted you’ve found my website.

I am a writer who lives and walks in NYC’s Morningside Heights.  A native New Yorker, I’ve lived – and walked my dogs – in cities across the country, including Portland, Maine, Portland, Oregon and Dallas, Texas.

When I returned to NYC in 2008, after almost twenty years away, I found myself astonished and fascinated by the surprises of NYC nature. Raccoons! Night herons! Peregrine falcons! Red-tailed hawks! Coyotes! Owls!  I was amazed at the animals that live alongside us in our strange, highly specialized urban habitat, and created this blog in 2009 to share what I saw and thought about on my walks.

It’s now 2020 and the dog is no longer with us. He died in 2018 at the age of seventeen. But the blog walks on!

You can subscribe, if you like, which simply means you’ll be notified by email when each new story is posted. 

Thanks for visiting!

If you’d like to reprint photos or written material, please email me and put “Out Walking the Dog” in the subject line. Unless otherwise noted, all photos are my own. Contact: melissacoopernyc at gmail dot com