Pandemic Pets
How getting a dog has helped families cope with lockdown
Julia Molony
‘It’s a bit like having a toddler again.” So says Dawn Nolan whose lockdown puppy Barker blew into her family like a furry tornado several months ago. Though Dawn had been promising her daughter Belle a dog for years, Barker’s serendipitous arrival just before the second lockdown means he joins a wave of Covid dogs — pets welcomed in their droves into homes up and down the land since the virus stopped our lives in their tracks.
It’s not hard to see why people have been buying and adopting dogs in record numbers in the last 12 months. These are not just simple pets, they are emotional support puppies, 5km-radius exercise companions, a giddy distraction and an injection of joy in difficult times — a warm blooded, soft-haired sweetener to help swallow a bitter pill of a year.
Barker’s arrival has changed everything for Dawn and Belle and completely altered their experience of lockdown. Dawn is a single parent and Belle is an only child. During the first lockdown “it was just myself and herself,” recalls Dawn. “It was very intense. It’s so much easier this lockdown getting her out for a walk. The first lockdown I remember getting so frustrated trying to get her out the door.”.
As a life-coach and founder of children’s wellbeing bookshop My Higher Shelf, Dawn has made a career out of helping children and parents find tools to support them emotionally. But even she was surprised by how much Belle benefited from the connection with Barker during lockdown, bringing a sense of comfort and secuity.
Barker is not only Belle’s surrogate sibling, he’s also filling a gap in her life left by contact with her friends. “She can do Zooms with her cousins and friends but it’s not the same. And to be honest, she wasn’t really interested in the Zooms. It’s great to have that connection with him,” says Dawn.
The mental and physical health benefits of dog ownership have been well studied. Contact with dogs boosts oxytocin, their loyal, emotionally attuned compansionship eases isolation and loneliness. They force owners out, whatever the weather, to exercise. They help forge social contact as well, providing a spark for conversation. So what parent, observing their children, rendered listless and screen-addicted after weeks of home-time, wouldn’t be tempted to add a puppy to home life under Covid? Indeed, there is some emerging evidence to support the idea. A study conducted by researchers from the University of York and the University of Lincoln, and published last autumn in the journal PLOS One, found that 91pc of dog owners felt “their animal helped them cope emotionally with the Covid-19 situation” leading the authors to conclude that, “having a companion animal… was associated with less deterioration in mental health and smaller increases in loneliness since lockdown.”
From a parenting perspective, there has also been specific research into the issue of how having a pet dog influences children’s perception of stressful events. Research published in 2017 demonstrated that 101 children exposed to a stressful event reported significantly less perceived stress if their pet dog was present with them at the time. The results support “the notion that pet dogs can provide socio-emotional benefits for children via stress buffering,” the researchers reported.
But there are drawbacks. And for a short phase Dawn herself could certainly have attested to the experience having increased, rather than decreased stress after welcoming Barker into their home.
“If you talked to me a month ago it might have been a totally different story,” she says. “I don’t know if I was a very good trainer initially. He was nipping a lot — that was his way of playing. So we did have to knock that on the head.” She found the very first days of his arrival, before he’d had his vaccinations “really hard”. You can’t leave him down, you can’t kind of bring him for a walk.” She hadn’t been quite prepared for how intense it would be.
Irish fashion designer Fiona Heaney had been promising her three children a dog for years. By coincidence, she found out a family friend was expecting a litter of puppies recently, and so she welcomed Harper, a 13-week-old cocker spaniel into her home a month ago. But for her, lockdown has turned out to be the ideal time to introduce a dog into their family.
“We’ve time to get to know the dog really well and understand its needs and for everybody to be part of that and everybody to pull their weight,” Fiona says.
Her two eldest are in secondary school and it was important for her to wait until they were old enough to be able to share the responsibility for the dog. Her eldest, she says, is doing as much of the work “as any of the adults. They have really invested in the dog, and are very involved in the training.”
She feels that there are benefits that are specific to adolescents. Harper is a great way “to get them away from a device in the evening or from just hanging out in their bedroom. They’re back downstairs with the
dog in the living room.” She’s a counterpoint to the “teenage isolation, where they tend to withdraw to the bedroom. There’s a remarkable difference in how much all of the family are present in the same locality.”
She’s also convinced that in their case, Harper has helped the children manage the stress they are under during a pandemic. “I would definitely say the dog has helped with anxiety levels. It’s a distraction. It becomes something that it’s not all about them.”
A new baby, even a four-legged one, is a lot to take on at the best of times. So when you are already juggling work, home-schooling and the usual day-to-day chores it can be overwhelming.
So much so that Jennie Casey, who welcomed Sylvie, a short-haired collie pup into her family a few months ago, has since reflected that in hindsight, it might have been more sensible to have got an older dog.
She says: “From an emotional point of view, I love her to bits,” she says. “She’s really lovable, and she’s brought loads of joy. But I keep thinking, what if we had got an older dog? The kids would have all the benefits of an older dog without the craziness.”
Jennie, who shares eight-year-old twin girls and a six-year old boy with her husband Shane, is studying for an MA in Creative Psychotherapy and Play Therapy for children, so has been interested to observe how her children’s interactions with the puppy differ according to their age and developmental stage.
Her youngest is six “so only just emerging from ego-centrism (according to psychologist Piaget’s theory of child development). A puppy is inevitably egocentric,” she adds. “So you have a child and you have the dog both of whom developmentally can’t really see the perspective of the other,” which she admits has it’s challenges.
There’s also the intensity of the workload to consider at a time when lots of families are already under unprecedented pressure. “It hasn’t necessarily been the best fit getting a puppy. For me it’s been loads of work. You’re still at a stage when you’re doing loads of laundry with the kids. The mud is on everything!”
Charlotte Blennerhassett, mum of eightyear-old James, agrees that the choice to get an older rescue dog, rather than a puppy has had specific benefits for her family.
“It’s completely a new addition to the family,” she says of lurcher Romie who joined her home late last year. The settling-in period was intense for them for different reasons.
“He was so damaged,” Charlotte recalls. “He
had a broken leg, every single part of his body used to shake. He would be trembling with fear.”
But Romie’s arrival was the start of a rewarding process or rehabilitation which has put a positive spin on things recently. She speaks glowingly of “just seeing him now and you come down in the morning,and every part of him is wagging. He’s so relaxed. When he sees other children, he’s much more relaxed now around people.”
Adopting a dog has been a rich and meaningful lesson in the transformative power of care and nurture for her son. “James was pleased with the fact that we hadn’t bought a dog. He didn’t come from a puppy farm. We were rehoming and giving an animal a second chance. And James is really aware of that — that he had such a horrible start, and actually now he’s cushioned with love.”