On a day-to-day basis, our lives have shrunk. There are no parties, no big travel plans. With the majority of offices and businesses closed, we spend significantly more time at home, only venturing out for groceries, jaunts to the park, or maybe to meet a friend for a drink at an outdoor bar. Enduring this slog requires patience and a dedication to simple pleasures. One weird trick to liven up this quiet, doomful existence? Spend your days with a dog.
Dogs are ideal companions during any era, but they’ve perhaps never been better suited to our current stay-at-home lifestyle. A dog doesn’t care if every single day is the same, so long as it contains yummy snacks, ample opportunities to sniff around outdoors, and plenty of quality time spent by their owner’s side. If only we could swap out our existential despair for a dog’s perspective, then our humdrum days might not seem so bad, because the smallest of moments could still feel worthwhile. At the very least, during the pandemic you and your dog are logging more hours together than you likely ever have before, so you may as well settle in and make the most of it. Here’s how.