HOW PANDEMIC PUPS ARE GETTING US THROUGH A VERY DARK YEAR

They slobber, stink, and shed everywhere. They’re also among the best things to happen to us in 2020.

My husband would tell you that I manipulated him into getting a dog.

He’s right.

One afternoon in June, I was in my new home office (my bedroom — but add a desk), flicking through Instagram, when I saw a post about how anyone can volunteer to walk rescue dogs at Doggie Style Pets, a shop around the corner from my Queen Village home. It was one of those weeks of the pandemic where it was particularly hard to make sense of all that was happening in the world. What’s more, I had just received an email confirming that my oldest daughter’s summer camp was officially canceled. So this small piece of new information? It felt like a sign. The idea of walking a dog seemed like going out for ice cream — a mini delight everyone in the family would enjoy. I immediately went to the website for Saved Me (the adoption agency run by Doggie Style) and signed up for a 30-minute slot for the upcoming Saturday. Like all kids ever, my two young daughters have been begging for a dog for ages. Finally, in a year with precious little of it, there’d be some good news to deliver.

We planned our Saturday around the appointment. I insisted my husband come along, having a sneaking suspicion that the second he saw the girls smothering the dog with baby talk and love, his resolve would crumble. It worked. We leashed up Minnie, a sweet three-month-old pit bull mix. By the time we reached the end of the block, my husband and I were having a full-on silent parent conversation, exchanging lots of knowing looks, head tilts and “C’mon” hand motions. He was hooked.

For a variety of reasons, it didn’t work out with Minnie. (As one friend said, “It’s easier to get into Harvard than it is to get a rescue these days.”) But by Monday morning, my husband was texting me links to nearby cockapoo breeders. We went from telling the girls “We’ll talk about it when you’re older” to putting a deposit down on a puppy in a week. Not long after I had given away the last of our baby stuff, I found myself once again installing safety gates at the bottom of our stairs.

So that’s how we got Penny, the world’s greatest dog and my new favorite child, a 10-pound chocolate brown wavy-haired furball who follows me into the bathroom. But look around, and you’ll see that my story is one of a million. Philly is booming with puppies and newly adopted dogs these days. My Instagram feed is full of friends making “new member of the family” announcements, my vet is booking appointments a month out, and there’s more dog poop on the streets than usual. (And that’s saying something for Philly.)

ABOUT A MONTH after we got Penny, on a muggy summer night, I was out for the bazillionth — and hopefully last — walk of the day. That’s when I met Spencer (the human) and Zeus (the dog), a stunning Alaskan Malamute puppy, on the grass patch near my house. Being a newly minted dog person, I had to know everything. (With their sled-pulling pedigree, Malamutes aren’t something you see in Philly every day.) Spencer told me he had just returned from Portland, where he’d picked up Zeus. “Maine?” I confirmed in the form of a question, sure that no one would travel to Oregon to get a dog in the middle of a pandemic. “Oregon. I know, it’s crazy,” Spencer said. I tugged on Penny’s leash, suddenly self-conscious about my Lancaster crossbreed that looks more like a stuffed animal than an actual animal. Clearly, she was unworthy of sniffing Zeus’s Westminster-level butt.

A story like Spencer’s is rare but not entirely surprising these days. People put so much into their dogs because they get so much back. Science supports the relationship: Studies from around the world have repeatedly shown that the simple act of petting a dog lowers cortisol, a stress hormone, and ups oxytocin (a.k.a. the cuddle hormone), which has been linked to human behaviors like trust and mother-infant bonding. Christina Bach, a licensed clinical social worker, believes in the soothing and healing effects of dogs so much that she created a program at Penn Medicine in 2015 that introduces therapy dogs to patients receiving cancer treatments. “It lowers blood pressure and slows down the heart rate,” she says.

This biological draw to dogs is something I now regularly experience firsthand — and with total strangers. When I was on a walk in Old City with Penny this fall, a young guy came running across Market Street, flagging me down like I was a long-lost friend. Turns out he just wanted to pet my dog. Another time, when I was out for a walk in my neighborhood, an older woman asked if she could say hi to my puppy. After a few minutes of kisses and tummy rubs and cooing — on the sidewalk, mind you — she stood up, looked me in the eye, and said that petting Penny was the best part of her day. I believed her.

But there’s much more to the human-dog bond than hard science can unravel. That’s especially true now, as our lives teem with uncertainty. Many people I’ve spoken with mention how their new dogs have brought structure to their lives again. They say that without morning commutes or lunch meetings, taking care of a dog is something to build a schedule around. “Life is so chaotic right now,” says Rachel Golub of the PSPCA. “The routine of owning a dog keeps you accountable — and forces you not to wear pajamas all day.”

Dogs are also distractions. Welcome ones. Bach says that’s one of the best things she’s seen her therapy dogs do for cancer patients: Spending even a few minutes petting or playing with a dog “lets people escape for a moment, makes them think about something else.” And in this year, with reminders of the pandemic, racial injustice, divisive politics, and an unstable economy lurking around every corner, shutting out the world for a few minutes might be the ultimate version of self-care.

The connections fostered by having a dog — whether to the dog or to other people — make bringing one into a home especially profound for people who live or work alone right now. Lydia Peterson, who lives in Grays Ferry, adopted Lena Rae, a shepherd mix, in July. As a freelance filmmaker and editor, she spends hours working on her own. Now, she’s got a built-in pal: “I like to run, and she likes to run. We run on the Schuylkill River Trail and go to all the parks.” Plus, admits Peterson, Lena keeps her from being lonely. “You know how it is,” she laughs. “When you have a dog in the house, you talk to the dog.”

At the beginning of the pandemic, I personally couldn’t have imagined fitting a dog into the hectic rhythm of my family’s day-to-day, even with my husband and me both working from home. But now, I’m so glad I didn’t let logic supersede emotion. Every member of our household has benefited from Penny, for all the reasons above and more. Most importantly, though, she’s bonded us together at a time when fighting, more than fun, has become our family’s norm. (It helps that Penny does adorable things like squeak while she yawns.)