PERFECT PANDEMIC POOCH
For Alex Champagne, left, and partner Ben Robillard, it has proven to be the best of times to adopt and nurture a pet, Bruce Deachman writes. And they’re not alone.
For Wilson and others like him, these are perhaps the best of times.
A 10-week-old great Pyrenees, Wilson has a new home with owners who adore and have lots of time to spend with him, lavishing him with attention and taking him on frequent walks.
Wilson is among a cohort referred to as “pandemic puppies” — dogs that are finding new homes during this novel coronavirus outbreak, an event that, for reasons both good and bad, has seen an increase in the demand for pet dogs.
Ottawa Dog Rescue co-founder Wendy Bolf says her organization has experienced close to a 15-per-cent bump in requests to adopt dogs, while the number of people hoping to foster dogs during the COVID-19 pandemic has ticked even higher. One doodle that recently appeared on their Facebook page, Bolf says, received 110 responses from people wanting to adopt it.
“We’ve had a spike in applications, for sure. A lot of them are looking for pups or younger dogs to integrate into the family, because they’re home, because their kids are home.”
The confinement many people have found themselves in during the last couple of months can certainly be an incentive for those who were already thinking of getting a dog.
But many people, Bolf worries, simply want a dog because they’re bored.
To that end, Ottawa Dog Rescue and other such organizations have stringent screening systems, including video tours of people’s homes.
“We want the homes our animals go to to be their last,” she says. “And people have to be aware that this, right now, is not our reality, this is not our day-to-day.”
Wilson was one of the lucky ones. Alex Champagne and Ben Robillard had been looking into getting a dog for about a year.
That they both have full-time jobs made that a difficult proposition, but Champagne’s position as an elementary school teacher left open the possibility of getting one at the beginning of the summer, when she would have more free time.
She had been looking online at rescue dogs — her parents have recently adopted one — in January and February, but felt the urgency surrounding rescue pets meant it would be better to wait until July when school was out.
But when in-school classes were suspended in March, Champagne felt the time was ripe. She ended up finding a breeder in Bancroft with one puppy left, and so she and her partner went to see it.
Ten days later — three weeks ago — they brought their new puppy Wilson home.
“This may be a good time for families who are at home and have time to socialize an animal,” says Sharon Miko, operations director at the Ottawa Humane Society, which suspended its adoptions in early March but is “very cautiously” resuming the program on Tuesday.
Wilson, meanwhile, is also fortunate that Champagne and Robillard are aware of and addressing some of the issues that can arise out of this exceptional time, including separation anxiety and socializing with people and other dogs, important factors in a young dog’s well-being.
“If you’re establishing a routine with an animal right now,” says Miko, “and then a few weeks down the road you’re back at work full time and that animal is all of a sudden thrown into a different situation, it’s important to do some research about preventing separation anxiety in animals.”
One way is by crate training, in which a dog is kept in a crate or room — its den, essentially — while its owners are out.
Champagne jokes that that raises a different issue: that she and Robillard have nowhere to go while acclimatizing Wilson to a few hours of solitude.
“And it’s harder to socialize him with other dogs, because people are a lot more cautious about who they let around their dogs, and the dog parks are all closed. So that’s been a challenge.”
Janet Burns, owner of Dog Dayz Dog Care and Training, in Kanata, suggests that new dog owners can encourage their pets to socialize with other animals through backyard visits with family members who have dogs, for example, with the people maintaining physical distancing.
That said, she adds, socializing young dogs involves so much more than just meeting other dogs.
“Socialization doesn’t just mean interacting with other dogs or people, but just being introduced to them, and it can be from a distance. So they see tall people, short people, children, running, on bicycles, on skateboards. Or even by taking your puppy for car rides.
“Finding anything in life that your puppy will be exposed to over a period of time is what it should be introduced to ... There are ways. You just have to get a little creative. You want them to not be fearful, and to see anything that you think they’ll come across. And make every experience as positive as you can.”