COVID-19. The novel coronavirus. A global pandemic. Safer at home. Lockdown. Work from home. Zoom. Disinfecting. Toilet paper. 6 feet apart. Masks, masks, and more masks. These words are the new normals. This is the new reality. This is 2020.
Beginning sometime in beginning of March, my boss began experimenting with working from home. He was able to see the writing on the wall a little bit clearer then our idiot President. He wanted to be ready for the possibility of working remotely, if necessary. He's not right often, but he was right on this call for sure. So, we did WFH test runs. The first one was a real reality check for me. I lost Gizmo, the absolute love of my life and my constant companion for 15 years, in early January. While I don't quite know how I got through January and February, that day in March was crushing. Being alone all day in our empty apartment was devastating. The quiet and stillness was suffocating. Going to work was a respite for me. It was the one place Gizmo was not missing because he was never there to begin with. The anxious pessimist in me just knew deep in my bones that we'd be working from home for a long time, and I knew if I had to be alone for that long I was going to have a nervous breakdown. That very day, in between bouts of manic pacing and rivers of tears, I went looking for puppies.
Enter Harvey G.
I found him on Recycler, which I hadn't heard of until that day and felt like maybe it was a weird, unscrupulous place to find a puppy. But it turns out, Recycler has been a source of classifieds for Los Angeles since 1974. In fact, the Recycler helped to launch the careers of many LA bands including the Dead Kennedys, Guns N' Roses, Metallica, and Hole. So, I guess in that sense, he's in somewhat good company, depending on your opinion of these bands. Despite my apprehension, on March 14th, 2020, my mother and I drove to Simi Valley to see if the little puppy from the Recycler was real. He was. He is. And now he's mine.
Harvey entered my life as the world entered a global pandemic and the state of California issued a state wide stay-at-home order. He's never known a life without me working from home. He's never dealt with being home all day by himself for 8+ hours a day. He's rarely had a walk without me (and a good amount of other people) in a mask. He rarely sees anyone except for me. Most seemed to think it was perfect timing, but I'm not so sure. I made a lot of mistakes when Gizmo was a puppy that I feel I may be unintentionally repeating with Harvey. Now at the time I got Gizmo, I was deeply depressed and drowning in grief. I shut myself in. I didn't socialize so I certainly didn't socialize him. And so he wasn't friendly to strangers or other dogs. He was more than a little neurotic and clingy and I blamed myself. God knows I loved Gizmo probably more than I should have, but I had planned to be so different with my next dog. So far, I don't feel like I am not doing a very good job, but for very different reasons.
Now, Harvey and I have been in quarantine for 154 days now. 5 months. 22 weeks. 3,679 hours. However you want to dice it. Doesn't look like this is ending any time soon. So, in an effort to do better despite the challenges I cannot control, I signed Harvey up for six weeks of pet training at the local Petsmart. It's a small, socially distanced class, but it's an opportunity for him to be around other dogs and strangers and to learn some skills that will hopefully make it easier to go forward in socializing him more fully.
That is, if we're ever allowed to socialize again.
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