Dog Owners Forced to Go Back to Basics

By Amy Fernandez

Strange times we are living in right now. Even in our fringy realm this lifestyle is a whole new learning curve. Obviously, it’s hard to schedule life with …no schedule. So, downtime is all the time. I don’t know about you, but I’m totally caught up with beer drinking and binge watching “must see” shows everybody’s been raving about. (Never gonna trust those friends again!)

Anyway, we are not the only dog people adjusting to a new way of life. In addition to bars, beauty shops and tattoo parlors in New York, most professional dog grooming services have been shelved in the interests of public safety. Before you think “who cares” you may want to check in with all your pet owners. Yes, you should be doing that anyway and you have no excuses at the moment. Depending on your breed, they may need a walk-through on certain basics like nail trimming and dematting or, better yet, mat prevention.

I’ve gotten a couple calls about Chinese Cresteds morphing into bristly porcupines, which is plainly not a good look for a purportedly hairless breed. But I’ll save that rant for another day. Let’s focus on the problem at hand, the upkeep of Cujo in the wake of social distancing. It may be a month or more before these routine services return to normal, so check in with your pet owners and Skype or Zoom them through the details.

Since I’m on the topic of pet owners, here’s an interesting dichotomy of this situation. While we’re all stuck at home feeling deprived of our normal amount of canine interaction, the rest of the world is experiencing a drastic surge in their usual dog time. Yes, suddenly deprived of their normal social interface, dogs are taking up the slack. And I’m starting to suspect that a lot of these dogs are counting the days until their owners go back to work.

Here’s the thing. Some breeds are built for that sort of 24/7 velcro relationship, but plenty are not. And the interesting thing is that, after living with these particular dogs for years, their owners are abruptly waking up to the significance of breed-based personality traits.  For instance, no amount of coaxing is going to convince a Pug that jogging is pure joy.

Personally, I think it’s brilliant that people are finally comprehending the function of this vital information (i.e. official breed standards) rather than dismissing it as archaic, meaningless claptrap.  There’s been an amazing uptick of traffic on AKC.org since this nightmare commenced, especially searches for puppies. Local shelters are also doing brisk business. Some are literally running out of dogs.

Lots of people see this as a train wreck in progress, but I disagree. Comparing it to the “Christmas puppy” syndrome is simplistic at best. For one thing, impulse buying for dogs or anything else isn’t likely to be much of an issue for the foreseeable future. More significantly, never in our history have people suddenly been faced with such a drastic, open-ended void of free time. Comparing this to Christmas is ludicrous to say the least.

Dogs are going to fill that void and their owners, both new and experienced, are going to be confronted with DIY protocols for their basic care. Pre-acquisition assumptions about farming out the tedious chores to groomers, trainers, dog walkers… NOT an option right now–at least in NYC and New York state.

Finally, all that advice pet buyers are traditionally packed off with is going to receive the long range attention that it should’ve had all along. No better way to leash train dogs than actually walking them every day.  Everybody’s world is shrinking. For awhile at least, they are gonna pay attention. I say, take that and run with it.

Short URL: https://caninechronicle.com/?p=181886

Posted by chesliepickett on Apr 10 2020. 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.