Quiz #69. After the Dog Days
Why are our dogs howling during the pandemic--and why are we not worried about it? Coronavirus confessions in Steve's Stay-at-Home Coronavirus Quiz for July 14, 2020.
When facing tough times, Sara often says to me, “The only way out is through.”
The pandemic is awful. Mind-numbing death tolls. A virus spreading, seemingly out of control again in large parts of this country.
For now, Sara and I are in a bubble—fully aware our bubble might burst at any moment.
“The only way out is through.”
And yet….
I have a confession to make.
There are more than a few things about the stay-at-home part of the coronavirus that I will miss when “this” is over. When we’re out and through.
No commuting.
3 hours each day on crowded trains and subways. Overhearing--as I once did--a man on his iPhone arguing loudly with his partner (or ex-partner) in which he said SEVEN times, “I don’t want to keep fighting, but….”
With no commuting, I have extra hours in the day to do a lot of things.
Write. Read. Scan photos.
More sleep.
Though I still find myself getting up too early most mornings, Sara and I have found that we’re sleeping more. I never set an alarm and, without a morning commute, most days Sara sleeps a lot later. A co-worker of mine who used to commute nearly 4 hours a day has been filling up his Facebook feed with completed household projects. He credits the extra sleep.
On the weekend and many weekday mornings, I take naps.
I love naps.
Better food.
Sara is a great cook and I have never eaten better in my life. (I do cook dinner sometimes, but it’s the exception.) We’ve had homemade bread and I regularly make chocolate chip cookies. Big cookies. The batter scooped out with an ice cream scoop.
The bigger the cookie, the better. (TV remote included for scale.)
Family time.
My daughter Annie and I became Facebook friends during the pandemic. I’ve had more conversations with my children and siblings in the last few months than in the last few years.
This weekend, my siblings and I had a Zoom reunion with some cousins--and we realized that some of us had not seen one another in decades. My one cousin said she cherished the time she’d gotten to spend with her grandchildren when they came to live with her during this stay-at-home part of the pandemic. At the end of the Zoom, we joked that it was good to “get together” at a family event that was NOT a funeral.
Reading.
When I’m not writing or scanning, I’m reading. (Another confession, I’m still reading “White Fragility.”) In July, Sara has been furloughed for 10 days, part of an agreement with state workers to avoid layoffs. She took the time to clean out the attic--and read. She’s reading the “My Brilliant Friend” series from Elena Ferrante.
The best-selling books have been recently featured in the HBO Series that Sara watched.
Sara calls the novels an honest portrayal of female friendship--and paused one day from her book last week to tell me that there was one thing she hated about reading a great book. She doesn’t want to stop--and gets angry that she has to put the book down to do other things. I joked that this was one more way in which we are not alike. I love getting lost in a book and find that I’m happiest when I can use it as an excuse for not doing other things. I like to have a bunch of different projects going, jumping headfirst from one to the other, often a good book, just long enough to hold my attention before moving onto another project--and then back again.
This week, Sara signed up to get the New York Times delivered daily to our house. She used to have the Times and the Star Ledger delivered daily but stopped two years ago to be better to the environment. We have an online account and always get the weekend editions delivered. At home, not commuting and with more time to read, Sara likes the actual paper copy each day. She says she doesn’t like how the online paper curates her reading. By reading the Times on paper, she reads more articles that she might not have seen otherwise--and that, for her, is part of the attraction of actually reading a newspaper. (I like to bounce around to whatever articles that turn up in my Twitter feed.)
The dogs.
As I wrote in Quiz #65. Dog Days, our dogs Stella and Happy have never been happier. Stella has claimed Sara and Happy has me. They love having us around—and we love having them with us in our bubble. We--and they--are never alone.
Last week, Sara left the house for a socially distant backyard visit with a neighbor--and Stella and Happy went nuts.
What this 0:14 video does not convey is that this coronavirus crying had actually been going on for a full minute after Sara left the house but before I was able to get my phone and start recording. Also, the only reason the dogs stopped crying was that Will (before his self-imposed quarantine) came up from the basement to see if the dogs were ok.
Apparently, we are not alone in having dogs who are becoming attached to their stay-at-home owners. On Monday, Bloomberg’s Businessweek published an article with this headline that is a real canine party-pooper, “Time to Tell America’s Dogs This Arrangement Won’t Last Forever.”
Dogs are becoming “overly bonded,” which means they’re intensely reliant on our presence to stay calm. Dogs signal this when they can no longer self-soothe and panic after an owner leaves a room or, God forbid, the house. It has to be addressed now—long before your dog is left home, solo, for long stretches when you return to the office—to avoid doggie meltdowns.
In the article, Arianne Cohen talks to dog trainers about the steps we dog owners should take now to break our dog’s dependency on us and to build our dog’s self-reliance, actually setting up structured time to force them to be alone during this “stay-at-home” period so it won’t be such a shock when “this” is over and we have to leave them again.
When I told Sara about this article, she rolled her eyes and said, “Oh my God. They’re animals. They will adjust… For all we know, they’ll be relieved when we finally leave them alone again.”
Note Well #1: I first saw this Bloomberg Businessweek article on the Twitter feed of Yahoo baseball writer Hannah Keyser. Keyser’s apparently a cat owner and she wanted her Twitter followers to know that some cats are also “overly bonded” with their owners.
Note Well #2: I checked Keyser’s Twitter feed because, as noted in Quiz #68. “Tay Stron,” it was her tweet that alerted me this weekend to the news story about a back-up catcher on the Kansas City Royals who had no symptoms but had gotten a positive result from a coronavirus test a day after playing in an intrasquad game. My “hot take” in Quiz #68. “Tay Stron.” was that this could be an ominous sign for baseball if the virus spread to other players on the Royals. That has not happened--at least not yet--and, another true confession, I was looking at Keyser’s Twitter feed to see if there was a follow-up on the Royals. Final confession for now, so far, I am wrong in predicting that the baseball season will not get off the ground.
Note Well #3: In one quiz comment relayed to me, a reader asked how Stella and Happy had gotten their names. Both were rescue dogs and both had been named before we got them. Stella was actually “Starla,” but Sara didn’t like that name. Sara thought “Stella” was close enough to “Starla” that the change would be easy for the dog to make and understand. Happy was “Happy” which is ironic because, well, she’s rarely happy. She’s more than a little nervous and insecure. In hindsight, Sara says the shelter named her “Happy” as promotional advertising--and it worked!
The Bloomberg Businessweek advice on preparing dogs for life beyond these “stay-at-home” days is sound advice, but Sara and I are not there yet. In part, we don’t think we will be ending our stay-at-home work routines anytime soon. More than that, if you’ve read this quiz, you know that Sara and I are planners, always trying to make sure that we’re ready for the worst.
Stockpiling groceries in February.
Buying masks in March.
Having a plan (and emergency equipment) even now if one of us gets coronavirus.
So far, we’ve been lucky--very lucky--that the virus has not had a major negative impact on us personally. Despite Sara’s July furlough, we still have jobs. We have food and no one in our family is infected.
If the worst thing that happens to Sara and me when things get back to normal is that our dogs are “overly-bonded” with us, why get ahead of ourselves and prepare them now to be on their own again later?
When “this” is over, of course Stella and Happy will miss being with us around the clock—and we will miss that too—but we’ll be out and through.
What did NOT happen?
A. During my recovery for brain surgery 3 years ago, I remember that several months into my stay-at-home recovery, Stella and Happy also howled when I started taking walks on my own to build my strength;
B. Stella and Happy howled from our bedroom in March. We let them out--only to discover that they were howling because they wanted to chase a coyote who’d come into our backyard;
C. Will’s quarantining in the basement for two weeks after a weekend visit with a bunch of college friends. He has a bathroom and a shower and is stocked with food. Each night, Sara leaves his dinner on a paper plate that he picks up from the top of the basement stairs after we go out on the back deck to eat;
D. After dinner, we FaceTime with Will which is odd because we know he’s 20 feet away. On Monday, July 13th, Will missed the evening FaceTime because he fell asleep;
E. Betsy returned to New Jersey after driving to Michigan for a visit with Ted, Erica, Turner and Marin. On her car ride home Monday, July 13th, with her dogs Fred and Brownie, Betsy spent three hours on a conference call with her elementary school staff as they try to figure out plans for how to teach students in the Fall.
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Answer #69. After the Dog Days.
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Want more?
Here’s the next quiz in the series: Quiz #70. Twitter-
Here’s the previous quiz in the series: Quiz #68. “Tay Stron.”
Here’s the first quiz in the series: Quiz #1. Stella and Social Distancing, March 13, 2020
Here is an archive of all the quizzes.
The quiz is explained here: Steve’s Stay-at-Home Coronavirus Quiz.
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