COVID and the Saddest Dog in the World

COVID has become a regular part of daily life. We live in a time of plague. Putting on a mask when leaving the house has become commonplace. Not seeing friends and family has become normal.

My innate desire to feel repulsion when seeing a large group of people has been allowed to flourish along with this terrible virus.

It has also provided us with an opportunity to see how selfish and dumb the general population seems to be.

We are clearly not all in this together.

But… anyone who has picked up a history book or seen a zombie movie knows that societies fall quickly.

Milwaukee On the Brink

My husband and I have largely become automatons. We go to work, masked, and it’s stressful and hard work, and then we go straight home to sleep, exhausted and dispirited.

We didn’t do Christmas gatherings.

We essentially quarantined for New Years in a room of a quiet Victorian hotel which didn’t even have a front desk clerk.

We have been alone together for so long now… I don’t feel like I’ve seen anyone outside of work in weeks.

But this was somewhat by design (and due to mental/physical exhaustion) because of how COVID has finally really arrived here.

Suddenly, most of the people we have been in (virtual) contact with had COVID.

The Buildup to the Climax

1. Two weeks ago, The only friend we really see anymore in a social capacity got COVID right after he got boosted. He was quite sick with Covid ☹️ but he got through it with his newfound love for horror movies. You’re welcome, Jon.
2. Then our various contacts at different dog adoption agencies each suddenly all had COVID and had to reschedule virtual meetings. This has delayed our adoption of a dog.

And then, this week,

3. The DJ of the community radio station we semi-religiously listen to in the morning on our way to work was… not doing her morning music show.

4. And then, on Tuesday, a colleague at work told me that she was at Target to purchase $300 worth of “work stuff” and was then instructed by a Target worker to operate a register herself because their entire staff were out with COVID.

But, if she was the only one left, why wasn’t she checking out things? However, maybe the register is not the most important activity to do at Target.

In any case,

5. then we saw a couple friends (masked and at a distance) the day after New Years (to pick up art after a show… not a social thing) and one of them had really suffered with COVID the week before.

And so on… the few friends I’m in contact with here have had the same sudden scary reality.

And now my poor husband tested positive for COVID.

He’s fine and… I honestly don’t know what else we could have done beyond never leaving the house.

We get tested weekly. And, especially in the last month, we wear masks everywhere we go and avoid crowded places, order a lot of delivery and have no social life whatsoever but with how infectious the various strains of COVID like omicron are we could have *it* and not even be symptomatic (due to our vaccinated/boosted state) and then… unknowingly transmit it to others.

Which is exactly what could have happened if we didn’t get tested last Tuesday.

I can’t quite emphasize how reasonably cautious we have been, especially since the last PCR negative test results. So we can’t think of how or when he was exposed.

We also are extremely co-dependent so he doesn’t go anywhere I don’t go. We even carpool to the same job.

But I tested negative when he tested positive.

We just didn’t know it for a couple days. Yesterday morning at 5AM we got our results.

So now we are quarantining in our tiny little house. I got tested again yesterday morning… just to see if I was still negative or if I had acquired it in the gap between Tuesday night and Thursday morning due to my close domestic and co-dependent contact with my husband.

He is the largely the only person I see without my mask in the past few weeks so… I’m waiting to see if I now too have COVID for the first time.

Soooooooooooooo… it’s finally hit home here in Wisconsin for us.

and the correlating death wave will follow the dramatic increase in cases. 😞

So it is vital to keep wearing masks – N95 masks – and to get tested occasionally if not weekly if you do leave your house.

Because this thing is crazy infectious and if the vaccinated/boosted unknowingly transmit it to a non-vaccinated person, we could kill them.

It’s time to dig in. It’s not as if it’s hard. Just wear a mask and get drunk by yourself at home.

If we’re honest, a good percentage of people already do both and have been doing both for many many years before COVID ever showed up.

Soooooo… What About the Saddest Dog in the World? Some Good News, for God’s Sake?

Sure. I don’t want to bum people out.

After being approved by maybe five shelters, we finally met a dog – a Great Dane named Tallie – last week… after the COVID quarantine period was lifted for her foster human…

but that lovely Great Dane reminded us too much of our beloved Hemi.

The bad qualities.

I had really endeavored to meet Tallie so when I realized we weren’t a good match, it was disappointing.

After Tallie and her masked foster humans left (I think Tallie gave David COVID), David cleaned up the glass of the candle her big high-energy body had accidentally shattered and… we went to bed.

Yet, on a whim, that night I applied to another dog adoption organization about another dog who has rather terrible photos and I was approved and the very next day – in the middle of a rather terrible day at work – the foster mom of the dog I was interested in texted me to see when I could discuss the dog.

I said “RIGHT NOW?” because I needed a non-work, happy thing and, technically, should have been at lunch anyways.

So she called and we talked and this sounded like exactly the kind of dog we needed so we met her that very night.

June Carter Cash was abandoned in a cemetery in the south with her three siblings, and then found and transported up here to COVID-ridden, cold Wisconsin.

She doesn’t know what snow is. Her brothers who are 100 lbs. heavier than she is were adopted right away and so… she has been left all alone and extremely traumatized.

I put myself in her paws… if I had been abandoned in a cemetery with my siblings and then hauled away to an unfamiliar place and then separated from the only family I had… I’d look a lot like how June looks.

In other words, THE SADDEST DOG IN THE WORLD

It’s odd. Every dog we meet through a rescue shelter is traumatized on some level.

But – like people – how they are coping with the trauma is so very unique.

Trauma makes some go a bit wild-eyed

become aggressive

abuse furniture

scream-bark-howl

or maybe they’ll just pee everywhere.

I’m sure we can all empathize with at least one of the above negative ways of behaving (metaphorically) when coping with some traumatizing event or whatever the hell was wrong with us that week.

I vividly remember laying on my back in a small city park at night and howling at the top of my lungs… and when people tried to approach me, I screamed at them to get away.

This was a week after my dad had died and my world felt at its end that night.

But, eventually, I got up.

But, in the case of June the dog, she seems to process trauma differently or “my personal favorite way” to process trauma:

The “I’m Elsewhere” Coping Strategy

This method mimics aspects of shock in that one is almost paralyzed with the overwhelming wave of what has happened so they don’t act out but, rather, internalize so deeply they detach their mind from their body to give themselves a little time to work some of this out psychologically and, in the meantime, they tolerate every single thing that happens to their physical self because they simply cannot risk any more soul-crushing conflict.

They’re amazingly tolerant because they’re not there anyways.

Yet, in the case of June Bug, the light in her beautiful eyes has recently returned, thanks to the loving care of her foster mom.

And she has started to eat and drink again.

And she also simply house trained herself, according to her foster mom, and has never once had an accident in the house.

So I’m in love (and also kind of wishing I was applying my PhD in Counseling and Psychotherapy in some kind of paid position)

June won’t pull or resist or be stubborn… no, she will just allow herself to be picked up and carried outside and then… set down to stand in the snow and look up sadly with those eyes to ask “Why am I here?“

Ahhhhhhhhhhh I cannot wait to provide this beautiful little southerner with some of the magic of what life can be.

Even when living in the end times in a plague.

Yes, a severely traumatized sensitive dog is exactly what I need right now.

If we don’t die from COVID or Milwaukee in the interim.

And, with that, I can only say: PLEASE stay safe and alive, everyone!!!

Also, it is fair to point out that, while my husband and I are co-dependent and need to work on that, I would go on if he died. I would go on and drive right over to the bird sanctuary in Edgerton, Wisconsin and adopt Lucy the Macaw who “loves it when you sing to her”.

David draws the line at birds.

Now I am definitely dying before my husband (I have some updates regarding my damaged brain which I’ll fit into another post) but I think it’s healthy to make plans for what you’d do if your people die.

How else do you honor them? Lay down and die too?

Posh.

Hold on!!!! Happy 2022!!!! And… music is medicine. Even now.

PRAYING FOR TIME SONG

And… for good measure… 🖤