My wife and I adopted a ‘pandemic puppy’ to make self-isolating less lonely. It didn’t work out like that.
A photo of the author’s wife hugging their new puppy.
Alex and Nola. Photo courtesy of the author.
“Ithink we should get a dog.” This was my wife, Alex, our first night sheltered in place. I was on the couch, in sweatpants, eating a burrito; Alex stood before me in jeans and a black blazer. In the crook of her right arm she cradled a laptop full of research she’d conducted on Bay Area dog shelters. She twirled her free hand as she spoke, like a lawyer addressing the court. “And I think it should be a puppy. A young puppy. Preferably with floppy ears. What do you think?”
“I think it’s a great idea,” I replied quickly, aware that her question had not really been a question, and that it would have been unwise to offer my honest opinion, which was that I thought adopting a puppy to be a bad idea. My reasons were mostly selfish. For one thing, though several months of quarantine-style isolation did seem ideal context for puppy-raising, I had imagined spending those months in a starkly different way — like by investing bullishly in myself. I wanted to read the New Yorker, write a novel, acquire abs (burritos notwithstanding). I wanted to install bookshelves. And it was hard thinking of a better way to torpedo that dream than by adopting an animal predisposed to destroying furniture. I had also long suspected dogs’ love for man to be more transactional than man likes to admit — that what dog-behavior we interpret as love is, more often, hunger — and so more generally, I doubted whether the new-puppy destruction to which Alex and I would be submitting could possibly, ultimately, be worth it.
Then I met the puppy in question. Nola was a three-month-old, foot-and-a-half-long Lab/shepherd mix with a gold coat she hadn’t quite grown into, eyes that gleamed like large buttons, and a brow that conveyed, in turns, bemusement, befuddlement, and serious thought. (And her ears: Boy did they flop.) Alex and I met her inside the small, Band-Aid-colored front office of a dog shelter in Potrero Hill. She was standing at attention in a pen in the corner. Her cuteness was hypnotic. She cocked her head at us; we, helplessly, cocked our heads back. By the time I snapped out of it, Alex and I had signed the pup’s paperwork, decided on the name, and started back for our apartment in Oakland.
“Can you believe this?” Alex said, as Nola set about exploring her new home, padding and skidding around with her too-large paws. She became excited, bumping into the walls, stumbling over her legs. In a balletic display, she sprinted at, careened into, and flipped off of the couch, landing on the carpet with a mirthful thud. I was concerned but only briefly, for promptly she bounced back up, cast a curious eye, and took a big, indiscriminate poop on the floor.
“I actually can’t,” I finally managed, reaching for the disinfectant. Then, under my breath, to myself: “What have we done?”
Mynerves didn’t last long. Once the poop had been cleaned up and the puppy pads and chew toys deployed, I was able to get to know this little creature — and that’s when things started to change.
First, I became fascinated by her. I discovered that we shared an affinity for games that involved tumbling around on the ground. I came to relish her unique puppy smell, a mix of pencil-shavings and bread. I began to admire her courage. And though her tastes proved typically canine — she loved chewing on things, distrusted mirrors — it was clear to me that she was singular, possessing qualities and preferences entirely her own. She liked being held like a baby at the window. And she enjoyed being read to, or, at least she appeared to enjoy being read to. That night, in a Hail Mary to get Nola to fall asleep — she despised the crate we’d bought for her to sleep in — I laid down beside her on the other side of the metal gate and read from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which I’d been rereading because it’s awesome. By the time I’d introduced Nola to Josef Kavalier, her eyes were closed, and her head was resting on her paws, and then, my God, she was sleeping. I, naturally, at this point, made my conclusion that Nola enjoyed being read to. Then I entertained the notion that I might possess mystical, dog-whispering powers.
By Day Two, I’d fallen under the impression that Nola was the smartest dog in the world. “She’s peed on the puppy pad three out of the last five times she’s gone to the bathroom,” I remarked to Alex, like a dad at a Little League game. “Show me another dog who can do that.”
Nola seemed to learn quickly, and, moreover, she seemed to enjoy learning; I imagined her brain as a shiny laboratory, buzzing with miniature dog scientists. Even more impressively, she seemed to intuit the importance of family, of togetherness; all she wanted, pretty much all the time, was to be with Alex and me. This struck me as wise, and — nuts though it sort of sounded, given that Nola was a dog, and that I’d only known her two days — I thought that maybe I could learn from it.
Turns out, I already had. We spent the next day, a Saturday, playing roll-around-on-the-ground, celebrating Nola’s bowel movements, and introducing Nola to our family and friends over FaceTime. It was one of the best days of my life — even though I didn’t do any reading, writing, or ab work. It was amazing. I felt like I could see what Nola saw. I remember coming out of the shower to find Alex and Nola asleep on the couch, Nola curled up like a comma, Alex gently snoring, and having it hit me. This was all I needed.
The contentment was enlivening. I’d been growing increasingly anxious about the dystopian state of things. It was nerve-wracking to read in The Economist about how the future of life on Earth would most likely resemble the movie 28 Days Later. It was nerve-wracking talking to friends who’d been furloughed. It was nerve-wracking talking to my parents.
But suddenly — so suddenly! — with Nola, I felt insulated from all that. I understood why everyone and their mother had been adopting puppies. Outside, the world might be rife with fear, but inside — equipped with kibble, coffee, several hundred puppy pads — we were content. Our apartment was an island, and we, its privileged inhabitants.
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