For the 4th of July, me and a small group of friends (around 10) grilled outside my friends place, and drank beers, all day pretty much, until we left for the fireworks. An interesting situation came up...

My friend lives in the neighborhood around the art museum...and there is no shortage of cute, intelligent girls walking around his neighborhood. We saw a few. I'll talk about another situation before I get to the main point...

A group of 3 girls, who I met earlier in the week when we grilled at a park in the city, walk by because they live nearby. One of these girls is involved with my friend already, the other I'm not attracted to at all, but the third I find really cute. She left early the last time I met her, but asked what my name was and introduced herself that day. This time they were on their way to another BBQ and just stopped to talk for a minute before going on their way. Saw them again later but yeah, they didn't really stop to talk, were just walking past my friends house. Seemed awkward to try and force conversation with them? Anyway...to the main scenario I'm wondering about...

A really cute girl (HB7.5 or so) walks past with her dog (a really big Boxer type)...he stops and pays attention to us, probably because of the food we had grilling. I just say to my friend, "Why are there so many cool dogs in your neighborhood?" He runs around, jumping between all of us, we're all petting him. She's laughing, trying to pull him away, apologizing. All of us basically are just like "Oh it's no problem"...I'm paying attention to the dog cause I'm honestly just an animal person, petting him and saying how cute he is. One of our friends (who already has a GF) makes a joke about offering the dog a beer...she laughs, he sits down in front of my friend for a minute, she finally drags him away, laughing...kind of embarrassed.

This whole time I'm thinking "I'd love to talk to this girl but have no idea how I'd go about it without it being awkward." This was mainly because of the fact that it was so many people. If I was sitting out there by myself and this happened, I'd probably not have an issue striking up a conversation with her. How do you guys think I could handle this though? I know this seems basic, but I was seriously clueless. My friend commented on how cute she was after she left, and I said something like "Yeah I know, I wanted to talk to her but there's like no way to do it in that situation without it being awkward." I don't believe this though, I'm sure there's some way I could have done this?