One of the things that I miss most about the time before the pandemic is when I would be gone from my dogs for a few days or weeks and then come home. Talk about feeling loved. I mean, I LOVE it when my dogs go nuts and greet me, and jump all over me, but maybe I wouldn’t like it so much if all humans did this. If a person greeted me by jumping around and putting their tongue up my nose, I might have to punch them in the head.
I’ve heard lots of people say that dogs have no sense of time and they act as excited when you’ve been gone 10 minutes as when you’ve been gone 10 months. I never understood that. It’s not been my experience.
Whenever I walk around a corner in my house and see Mabel or Gilbert standing there, they almost always get at least a little excited. Their tails turn on like a wind turbine. And that’s always a good time. It’s like a mini party in the hallway. Yay! I know we just saw each other in the kitchen but WOOOOOOOO!!!!
When I’ve been gone for a few hours and come home, I get something more like this. I’m going to crawl up to your head now.
And that’s even better than one of those ad hoc hallway visits when I just saw them 3 minutes ago.
But one time Jodi and I went to Europe, and we were gone for about a month. When we got back, the dogs went absolutely ballistic. Mabel wouldn’t stop making this crying sound for about 30 minutes. And boy were they hungry too. (Just kidding.)
Since the pandemic started though, we haven’t really gone anywhere. We’ve all been together just about 24/7. I know a lot of people just decided they’re going to start going anywhere they like and doing anything they want, no matter what the death toll is, but I’m not going to do that. I don’t want to get sick, and I don’t want to make anybody sick.
So I haven’t been gone long enough to get one of those really crazy dog welcomes in well over a year. But at least we’ve got the Internet and everyone has cell phone videos, so we can relive these moments vicariously through others whenever we want. And that’s a good thing.