I don’t own a dog, though I like them very much.
Upon graduating from college during a major recession, I was broke and unemployed. I moved back to my parents’ house and worked in a North Jersey bottling plant and then as a milk truck driver. My parents had a 100-plus pound Golden Retriever/Alaskan Malamute female that my Mom incongruously named “Sugar Bear.”
With my hometown friends all spending time with their girlfriends on a March, 1982 Saturday night, I took Sugar Bear to a county park ten miles away to hike and camp alongside a lake there.
I also had a girlfriend but she lived out-of-state. No, really!
Arriving in the late afternoon, I set up my tent and walked alongside a nearby, ten-yard-wide river. Sugar Bear would run up ahead, or if she smelled something interesting, lag behind.
It had rained heavily in the preceding days, so the river was swollen and its muddy banks were slippery. Twenty yards behind me. I heard a splash and then, a distressed bark. Sugar Bear had fallen in and the swift current was carrying her downstream. I ran up ahead of where she was in the river, jumped into the chilly, chest high water, moved to where she was flowing, caught her with my arms, carried her over to the banks and pushed her up. It was a man-saves-dog story; not very hard or dramatic.
Sugar Bear and I were soaked. The sky portended more rain and I had no change of clothes. But I had wanted a change of scenery and didn’t want to go home an hour after I’d arrived at the park. The only dry garment I had was a jacket that I wasn’t wearing during the short hike. I removed all my wet clothes except for my undershorts and tied the jacket’s sleeves around my waist to resemble a loincloth. It was about 55 degrees; not cold but not warm either, especially in that attire.
Seeing me dressed oddly and hearing my explanation, a passing Boy Scout patrol of about ten early teens and their adult leader invited me to the campfire after dark on the lake’s other side, where, they said, I could drink some hot beverages. I accepted. When I saw their fire across the lake, I headed over. First, we did a sing-along. Then they did a skit, which I won’t describe here, but was LOL funny. I had never been a Boy Scout. On that night, and at age 23, it was good to belatedly, briefly have that experience, even though I never got any merit badges.
Grateful for their hospitality, as the Scouts went to sleep, Sugar Bear and I walked back to our tent about a quarter mile away. We crawled in and fell asleep.
Unsurprisingly, around midnight, the sky opened and unleashed a tremendous downpour. Our tent soon started taking on serious water.
When, during the Scamdemic, bureaucrats pushed masks as barriers to a respiratory virus, I thought of this, and other, rainy camping nights. Camping dilettantes might think that a tent’s nylon shell blocks rain; after all, it provides a visible barrier. But looks can be deceiving. Most tents are very porous. Water flowed freely into the tent through all surfaces, including the floor.
Given the rain’s intensity, Sugar Bear became agitated and afraid. And I knew I wouldn’t get any sleep lying in a deepening, body-length puddle. I decided to cut and run. I pushed the reluctant dog out of the tent, compressed the tent under my arm, abandoned the clothes that got wet during the river incident and ran through as heavy a rain as I’d ever experienced, to the gravel parking lot about a half mile away.
Man and dog were drenched to the bone. In the driving rain, I began to drive back to my town, wearing only my tighty-whities; no shirt, no shoes.
About a mile from home, I saw two teens hitch-hiking in the deluge on that then-traffic-free road. I knew I wasn’t dressed for the occasion. But the rain was saturating them. As I had hitch-hiked often, I repaid the favor when I could. I stopped 50 yards ahead of them. They ran for the car in the watery blackness.
When the first one opened the rear, passenger side door, he exclaimed, “Thanks!”
Then they saw how I was dressed. Their faces froze.
I shouted above the sound of the rain, “Get in! I can explain!”
Lacking a better option, they did. I gave them a ride to a party not far off my route.
I suspect that, at that party and at the Monday lunch table, they retold the story of the nearly naked lunatic who picked them up in the rain. Forty years later, they may still remember it.
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Several years hence, and within weeks of euthanizing a very sick Sugar Bear, my parents shelter-rescued an excessively energetic male Golden. Just as she had misnamed a female dog ‘Sugar Bear,” my mother named this very vital male “Amber.” Given the inaptly feminine moniker, I often called Amber, “Rambo.”
Regardless, he was the best dog ever. (Except, of course, for any of your dogs). Amber was smart, fun, and good with kids—but smart enough to steal the food off my three-year-old daughter’s plate, right under her nose. He quickly sized up his place in the snacking order.
Amber’s endearing transgressive streak also showed itself in other ways. For example, he and I frequently, illegally swam in another nearby lake. There, I dove off a 12-foot high rock and swam toward the lake’s center. Amber lunged into the water and chased me as I treaded water. In order to avoid him climbing on me as in the lake, when he got near, I would swim underwater and surface past him and then swim on the surface to the edge, climb out and start the process again, with dog in pursuit. Shake. Dive. Swim to center. Return to rocks. Repeat, multiple times. He came home tired.
And when I visited my parents, Amber always sneaked into my room at night to sleep. He waited until my father—who forbid the dog to go upstairs—went to bed before the dog tip-toed up the stairs and jumped into my bed.
So I understand why people love their dogs.
—
Nonetheless…
When I was growing up, most dogs were owned by families. Now, dogs are super popular among single people. Dogs have become many Americans’ primary companions. Thus, telling millions of dog lovers, during the lockdowns, that they had to stay home didn’t bother canine owners; to many, avoiding other people and hanging out with their dogs was a good outcome, not a sacrifice. Most dog—or cat—lovers didn’t object to lockdowns or working from home, especially while getting paid their full salaries, or getting enhanced unemployment.
During the Scamdemic, far more adults with dogs walked past my front porch than walked by with kids. All or nearly all of the lockdown dog-walking humans wore masks. Yes, outside. But none masked his dog. Weren’t any of the masked pedestrians concerned that dogs could transmit the dreaded virus to people, or to other dogs? After all, dogs do all that full-body sniffing—just saying—and people nuzzle with their dogs and otherwise exchange plenty of “droplets” with their furry friends.
The Mayo Clinic says that dogs can get Covid from humans. But they assert that Coronavirus transmission from dogs to humans is “rare.” (Asymptomatic spread among human adults and spread from kids to adults were also known to be rare. But our policy-makers conveniently ignored those facts). Why wouldn’t inter-species viral transmission be reciprocal?
Both the CDC and WEF websites point out that multiple mammalian species, including deer and ferrets, have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. In late 2023, despite all the information that’s come out showing “gain of function” efforts in Wuhan, these websites still disingenuously assert that the “Pandemic” began when humans were infected by bats. Far more people have close contact with dogs than they have with bats. Perhaps Public Health officials didn’t want to villainize dogs. They knew such a message wouldn’t go over well.
Did anyone know of any dogs who died of Covid? If so, no one has told me. Dogs’ 100% Coronavirus survival rates may reflect that dogs don’t live to ages at which they have no vitality and failing immune systems, as did the ostensible human Covid victims. It may also reflect that SARS-CoV-2 infected dogs weren’t taken to hospitals where they were killed by medical treatments and/or that the government offered no subsidies to veterinarians to code/attribute dog deaths to Covid.
Dogs have obvious instincts. Shelter-in-Place Orders be damned, dogs yearn to be outside. And they sense peril. Dogs can even olfactorily detect cancer in humans. Did dogs ever sense or feel threatened by a respiratory virus?
The main reason I don’t have a dog is that I live in a high-density setting and can’t just let a dog out to roam and chase squirrels. Further, I get enough motion in my average day without having to walk a dog. And if I had to walk a dog several times/day, I’d have no time to write for Substack.
Plus, cleaning up after canines is—even to me, with a high germ threshold—kind of nasty. Dog doo can transmit giardia and other parasites and a wide array of nasty viral and bacterial pathogens, including E. coli, salmonella and campylobacter. Some of these pathogens have entered bodies of water when people—like me—have taken their dogs to hike in the woods.
To say nothing about cats and their “litter” boxes.
But can you imagine the uproar and defiance if the government forced dog and cat owners to give up their pets because they carry and spread germs? The number of protesters would make Woodstock seem like a coffeehouse show. Any effort to confiscate dogs and cats would resemble the decisively failed German assault on Stalingrad; there would be fierce, house-to-house battles with countless casualties. Hand over Benji?! People simply wouldn’t accept such governmental overreach.
Before and during Coronamania, our society didn’t confine or confiscate dogs and it tolerated dogs’ and cats’ zoonotic yuckiness. Why? Because we’ve collectively decided, without voting on it, that dogs and cats are good companions and that companionship is more important than is avoiding pet-borne pathogens as strenuously as one would avoid The Plague.
Yet, somehow, such cost/benefit analysis regarding people sharing time, space and microbes didn’t occur during the Scamdemic. Instead of weighing the obvious, astronomical human costs of the various, ludicrous “mitigation” measures against these measures’ purported, but unattainable and faux goal of crushing a virus, government officials deliberately induced maximum disruption and consternation.
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For me, it's my witness of the credulity and cooperation afforded the absurd, the utterly nonsensical, the obviously destructive, the criminal, and the patently stupid that have affected me to my core. I am forever changed; that is, I will forever see my fellow human beings as untrustworthy. They proved it -- in spades. I now know -- for sure -- that the vast majority can be told 𝒂𝒏𝒚𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 -- and to save their sorry asses will do 𝒂𝒏𝒚𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈, including tossing everything of real value right out the window while demanding that I do the same.
ANYONE, and I mean anyone that wears a mask thinking that it protects them from viruses should have a guardian. The problem with that plan is finding enough guardians.
OTOH, dogs will love you no matter what.
Lock your dog in one closet and the wife in another for 2 hours.
Which one is going to be happy to see you????