Our measure of dog walking identity in this study may overlap with prior research on dog support/obligation (e.g., [12, 13, 49]). Identity is a self-categorization of oneself into a particular role  and a sense of obligation and responsibility for one’s dog would seemingly be a part of a dog walking identity. Our findings with identity and action control support this prior work. Qualitative interviews with dog owners highlight how dog walking is a duty or a role described with similarities to parenting children . Further, Brown and Rhodes  found that a sense of dog responsibility/obligation was able to predict walking behavior independent of walking intention, which is similar to the results of the current study. In M-PAC, identity is expected to impact action control via selective processing of information, thus shielding from other intentions (i.e., staying on course) and by imposing dissonance (i.e., negative affect) when behavior is not congruent with the identity . It seems worthy to explore whether dog walking identity can be modified, presumably through pre-set rank-ordering (e.g., priority lists, I will walk the dog before I do household chores), commitment affirmations (realizations and statements about the value of dog walking to companionship), and social activations (purposeful statements about dog walking when describing one’s self to others) .