Puppies on Parade
Our neighbourhood has been overrun by puppies. Well, technically dog walkers. And generally not puppies but fully grown dogs. The fact of which does nothing to stop me from squealing, “Puppies!” every time I see one.
The Puppy! squealing is not a new behaviour of mine born from some sort of quarantined mania. I have always gotten excited when a dog walks by. Cursed with both a deep love of animals and terrible allergies to them I assume it’s the Universe’s way to prevent me from having a stable of mutts.
Before they developed the mountain people would ride horses up the street. Sometimes we would see a family of deer making their way down the sidewalk. At night the yip yip yip of coyotes would get so loud it would wake us from a dead sleep.
Now the things that wake me are an obnoxiously loud motorcycle that insists on going too fast and the occasional drunken group of teens on the school playground behind our house. By now of course I mean, Before.
It snowed in Ottawa this morning as Prime Minister Trudeau gave his daily briefing. We haven’t hit the peak yet, and have switched to talking about the crisis in waves not weeks. An 18 month timeline was discussed. Twenty two thousand deaths expected.
Today we remember Vimy Ridge. A battle which saw 7,004 wounded, 3,598 killed.
I’ve lived in this neighbourhood for the better part of twenty-six years and yet I have never seen so many dogs. Where the people are coming from I have no idea. A pair of Samoyeds floated up the hill last night. This morning two miniature Schnauzers marched back down. Poodles and Pit Bulls and Pekinese one by one go by the window. There’s a floppy-eared German Shepard who has yet to figure out “stay” and a Spaniel that has only mastered the first half of “Fetch”. I don’t know their names, to me they are all “Puppy!”
There’s a good chance all of these people live in my subdivision and are not part of an elaborate dog walking scheme. Honestly I have no way of knowing. In the two and a half decades I’ve been here I can name the neighbours in three houses. Two of them I’ve seen in public and they had no idea who I was. Perhaps I look drastically different when not getting into or out of a Mazda.
It’s not that I’m not friendly. I can be. Sometimes. But the neighbourhood doesn’t lend itself to community. A 45 degree hill that’s also a cut through between two highway by-passes. Sidewalks and street lights only on one side. Unruly weeping birch trees adding to the camouflage. It’s a modern sunshiney misanthrope’s concept of Suburbia.
Isolation isn’t for everyone. My best friend’s little boy turns one today. She’s a single mother living in a downtown apartment. They’ve been alone for a month now. For his birthday I bought him a train that teaches him language and is suitable for 12 months plus. I worry he will have outgrown it before I can see them again.
How does one give gifts in the apocalypse? Would Emily Post recommend sending cards or point out that it puts the letter carriers at risk? If I were to wrap the gift in something easily disposed of, after being in isolation for two weeks, can I leave it outside the building and call them from my car?
The idea of caring for people through inaction is completely counterintuitive.
Black and yellow Labradoodles are bouncing around the baseball field behind our house. Neither would make a good short stop. They have no idea what is going on in the human world. Dogs are going for all the walks they want and getting so many belly rubs. Their humans are clinging to them for comfort and the canine community is more than happy to oblige.
Each day seems more uncertain than the last. Forced into the microcosm of our homes the opening of a tulip seems the grandest of events. Laundry has presented itself as a contemplative task. And the puppies march in a parade with an audience of one.
