Like most of us and our pets, Leo has been feeling the effects of social distancing. Unfortunately, Leo doesn’t understand why he hasn’t gone to the park or the beach, and he really doesn’t understand why we don’t stop and say hello to the neighbors on our walks. Now, every time we see other people or dogs on our walks Leo lights up and tries to direct the walk towards them. If we do cross paths he tries to lunge at them. The lunge isn’t an aggressive lunge, it’s a “love me, pet me” plea for attention. For those who don’t know Leo it can be a scary sight seeing such a large dog coming at you, but those who do know him, know he is all fluff and no bite. However, we usually hold him back because aggressive or not, he’s a hefty 95 lbs of fluff.
The social distancing has also completely changed Leo’s perspective on car rides. Before the stay-at-home order, Leo would come to work with me every day, meaning he would get into a car 20 times a week at the minimum. He had never liked car rides so he was never enthusiastic about jumping in. In fact, I usually needed to coax him with treats to jump in. Since we’ve been home, Leo hasn’t been in the car much at all. After a few grocery store trips, Leo was upset that he wasn’t coming along. So we decided to take him along whenever it was possible, like picking up take-out. In the past two years, we’ve had Leo, I’ve never seen him more excited about jumping into the car. Now, he can barely wait until the door is open before he launches himself into the backseat. He also absolutely loves sniffing outside the windows, whereas before he wouldn’t go near the open window.
Hopefully, when Leo starts going to work every again day he’ll continue to love car rides just as much as he does now.
https://blog.petmeds.com/life-with-leo/leos-social-distancing/
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