I retired from teaching just as the COVID-19 epidemic was surging. Remember that time? Great waves of fear and confusion rolled in as we kept washing our hands and swabbing our noses and trying to discern if the little pink line was visible or not — that blurry line between wellness and illness. And so, my newfound “freedom” from full-time work was of course curtailed by all the sickness and by the physical and emotional isolation.
Amid this culture of quarantine, everyone started getting comfort cats and dogs to distract from the fear and loneliness. Given that I was home alone with plenty of time on my hands, my wife and kids suggested a “pandemic puppy.” So one day, I picked up my daughter in St. Louis, and she rode with me to a farm in rural Missouri that raised yellow Labs. This was where she had gotten her dog. We picked out an adorable and seemingly normal puppy and named her Gracie.
Fast-forward a year. Gracie was still adorable but completely neurotic, weighed 75 pounds and shed little shocks of white hair all over our house. “Think of her as a ‘special needs’ dog,” one vet said. She would not go for walks and often hid in the bathroom, or basement, trembling with fear when she heard loud noises. The garbage truck was the worst. I soon put a white noise machine, turned on full blast, in the bathroom on garbage day. This helped. But she still huddled in the bathroom corner, shivering. And her response to thunderstorms was much worse.
When other dog owners observed her fear and shaking, they always asked: Is she a rescue? “No, she’s from a breeder,” I would quietly mumble. Then the person would frown, clearly disapproving and no longer sympathetic: “Oh, our dog is a rescue.” That’s when my tail would drop down between my legs. “Guilty as charged,” I wanted to say.
On April 1 that year, when the vet prescribed Prozac and Trazodone for Gracie’s “neurological irregularities,” I was puzzled. I took Prozac myself for several years, and my dad took Trazodone. Weren’t those drugs for people? And that day, when I filled the prescriptions, I discovered that the dog drugs cost triple what they do for people. The pharmacist said I should consider getting health insurance for Gracie. What? Yes, dog is “god” spelled backward, but does that mean we should treat dogs as such?
Later that afternoon, I saw a young couple out walking with a baby carriage a mile or so from our home. As I was passing them, I stopped. Their “baby” was some kind of fancy toy terrier.
“His name is Tuffy,” the man said. “He’s a Shih-Poo.” They smiled at me proudly. Did he say, “Shampoo”?
I looked at my watch. April 1. This was all beginning to feel like a joke — Gracie’s neurosis and all the time and money she required. I felt like I’d been fooled. Not by my family but by our ill-at-ease culture. More than 23 million American households, or nearly 1 in 5, adopted a pet during the pandemic, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Thousands of pandemic puppies have since been returned or rehomed; many shelters are now overflowing with dogs. Like me, those new owners had no clue how much time and money dogs require, nor any understanding of their complex socio-emotional needs.
But now, a couple of years later, I finally get it. Sort of. And our goofy yellow Lab still graces our daily life with her spirals of anxiety and affection. Though she still will not leave our house to go on a walk, if I drive her a few blocks away, and we start from and return to the car, she can manage a 20-minute stroll without coming unhinged. She’s learning.
And I’m learning. I’ve come to appreciate Gracie’s unconditional love and the way she cocks her head to one side when curious. And it’s refreshing to live with someone who doesn’t worry about the cost of groceries or a dead phone battery or climate change. Someone who doesn’t understand hours or minutes or dollar signs and who, for some weird reason, blindly follows me wherever I go.
Last Christmas, I got Gracie some full-spectrum CBD dog treats, or “calming bites,” thinking that they might help her chill out. One night, I gave her one and then took one of my own CBD gummies. And somehow, as we sat there chewing, Gracie seemed to understand and appreciate the gesture, the dog-human solidarity. She looked up at me like I was her drinking buddy, and we didn’t have a care in the world. And when she lay down by me and put her head on my lap, that was exactly how I felt.
Tom Montgomery Fate is an emeritus professor at the College of DuPage and teaches at the University of St. Francis in Joliet. His most recent book is “The Long Way Home,” a collection of essays.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.
