Pandemic Puppies

By Amy Fernandez

Now that shows are back, an ongoing topic of conversation has been the “pandemic puppy” dilemma, and Westminster was no different. Basically, all that downtime led to a lot of creative focus on puppy production. After all, why not put your time to good use when you are stuck at home anyway?  The problem was what to do with all those glorious pups when they got up and around. After all, the whole reason for breeding is to keep the keepers. And for any potential show pup that entails early and intensive training and socialization. Yeah, it was the classic case of ‘all dressed up and no place to go’.

Naturally, it’s been frustrating for breeders trying to devise workarounds for this unique situation and, as noted, it was a popular topic at the show this week. If it’s any consolation, quite a few judges are cognizant of this issue and they seem to be giving young dogs a lot of leeway for basic behavior issues like table exams. It will take time, but we will get there.

Meanwhile, we shouldn’t feel discouraged because at least we had the foresight to recognize a potential problem. That’s not how it’s working out for all those novice puppy buyers now facing the same deal. They had tons of time to bond with their new pups, which led to some unprecedented successes in basic training protocols. But, never having done this before, a sizeable portion of novice owners never even considered that all-important aspect of training, which is teaching a puppy to deal with alone time.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that dog behavior and training has suddenly gotten a lot of mainstream news coverage. And the big issues coming to the forefront are separation anxiety and, gee…why do dogs seem to do so much crummy stuff when they are left home unsupervised.  So, I’ve been following some of this on social media, and seeing them slowly connect the dots and finally realize the value of crates, gates and puppy pens is like watching a bad rerun.

Among the trending hashtag themes has been the idea of allowing owners to bring their dogs to work. So far, that plan doesn’t seem to be catching on. On the other hand, services like dog nannies, dog walkers and canine daycare services are doing record business. Recently, the Times interviewed Raf Astor, who boards and walks dogs in the East Village. According to what he’s seen, it’s really not the dogs having problems, mostly it’s the owners. “A lot of these dogs have become emotional support animals; so now, when they have to leave their dogs, a good portion of the anxiety is coming from the owner, not the dog.”

It’s hard to disagree with that assessment. This is gonna be a steep learning curve…

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Posted by showresults on Jun 25 2022. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.