Through most of her professional working life, she was devoted to her students. Planning lessons. Marking papers. Grading. For something like 40 years. But a couple of years ago, Karen retired. Then, the pandemic hit, and suddenly she had plenty of time on her hands. She chose this moment to buy a Golden Retriever puppy. And guess who now has no time except for the dog?
“The Golden is pretty much the counter cleaner,” she told a group of Probus Club meeting I attended this week. “He jumps up and takes whatever he wants. I’m pretty much a dog-sitter 24/7.”
Karen’s experience happens to coincide with a virtual tsunami in pet buying, pet-food consumption, pet-toy purchases and pet-training classes across the world. As a benchmark of the sudden frenzy around dogs and cats, for example, last year the pet industry in the United States exceeded $100 billion in sales for first time ever, nearly a 10 per cent increase over the pre-pandemic year 2019.
That buying and selling explosion included pet food and treats (up 10 per cent), veterinary care and products (up 7 per cent) and medications (up 15 per cent). Canadians were right up there, when it came to spending big-time on canine and feline family members – $5.7 billion, an increase of $300 million over the pre-pandemic year.
Perhaps not a surprise, North Americans’ inward focus on their own health over the course of the pandemic lockdown, has also meant they’re taking better care of their pets too.
Steve King, the CEO of the American Pet Products Association, told an industry website, “The product trends we are seeing in the pet-care community, mirror those of consumers – a desire for a healthier lifestyle, (greater) fitness (and) improved well-being.”
That’s about where I fit in the pet explosion picture. Several years ago, when I experienced a back injury playing hockey, I decided to fill the gap playing less hockey by walking every day. I started rising early, often before sunrise, and walked five to 10 kilometres a day along several different routes around town.
It wasn’t long before I sensed the loneliness of the long-distance walker, and suggested we get a dog I could eventually have join me on my morning constitutional. Enter, “Jazz,” a male, liver-and-white English springer spaniel, whom we picked from a litter of eight pups whelped at a breeder’s kennel in Millbrook, Ont.
“No,” my wife corrected me. “We didn’t pick Jazz. He picked us.”
She’s right. When we arrived at Springville Springers, breeders Frank and Bonnie O’Grady led us to a small pen where the four males of the litter leapt and tumbled over each other for our attention. The O’Gradys told us to take the pups, one at a time, away from the others to see how each responded. The first pup on the loose put nose to the ground and began exploring everything but us.
We separated the second pup from the group, and he did figure-eights around my wife’s feet. I sat on the grass, and he promptly crawled into my lap looking for attention. We checked out pups 3 and 4, but pup 2 had made our decision for us.
I’ve had the good fortune to have dogs in my life almost constantly since I was age five. But much like we forget what it’s like to attend to human infants, I’d forgotten how much attention puppies demand. Initially, in the quest to house-train him, there were several trips a night to a relieving pen through the darkness into the backyard. In addition, every time we fed, played with, or disturbed Jazz’s sleep, it was back outside, sometimes every 10 or 15 minutes, all day long.
My neighbour had seen me dashing outside with him constantly and wondered if the dog had a dysfunctional bladder. No. It’s because (instead of laying out newspapers like the old days) the pandemic has given us the time to be at Jazz’s beck and call. The minute he begins sniffing about, out we go!
But continuous walks outdoors are just the beginning. No trip to the store happens these days without a stop at the pet entertainment centre and the purchase of something, anything to distract Jazz from finding our socks, chewing the corners of rugs, or his favourite snack – gobbling up dirt and sod.
Next, it will be obedience classes (when the pandemic allows). And eventually, I’ll be able to introduce Jazz to my long morning walks when I can chatter at him about what’s on my writer’s mind – you know, the usual kind of stuff one discusses with one’s dog-walking companion – substantive editing, grammar and syntax or even writer’s block. He’ll no doubt have the answers.