The bed groaned, which is what woke me. In the semi-darkness an antlered figure was silhouetted at the base of the mattress.
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Buck, what are you doing here?”
“Fetching you your paper,” he said, though in truth he was reading it, flipping the pages with a cloven hoof.
“Trump’s still screaming conspiracy,” he reported, “and his crackpot followers still believe him. Do they sell MAGA hats in tinfoil? Somebody could make a fortune.”
I sighed, then repeated the question: “Buck, what are you doing?”
“Curling up at your feet,” he replied. “It’s what we dogs do.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Dogs?”
“Woof,” he confirmed.
“You’re switching species?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m filling a gap in the market.”
I opened my mouth to say something, then paused. In an odd way, Buck made sense.
For while Victoria might be overrun with deer — chewing through your garden, razing your roses, stepping in front of your car as oblivious as a guy (OK, me) staring at his phone — it has a shortage of dogs.
Blame the pandemic. People who would normally be snowbirding in Arizona or working in downtown offices now find themselves at home, eager for canine company. Except now there aren’t enough dogs to go around. They’re like toilet paper and hand sanitizer were last spring. Online, you can find backyard breeders charging thousands for mixed-breed mutts.
The shortage isn’t just local. In Vancouver, the B.C. SPCA fielded 200 applications for a single puppy. “Dog adoptions and sales soar during the pandemic,” read a headline in the Washington Post.
The ABC affiliate in San Francisco recently warned of a “Christmas puppy shortage.” In Australia, the surge in demand has prompted some shelters to charge adoption fees as high as $1,800. “Fears over dog smuggling as lockdown puppy prices rise by up to 89 per cent,” warned the banner over a story by Britain’s Sky News.
The thing is, there would be a lot more dogs available, at least locally, if only the puppy pipeline wasn’t plugged. “The rescue groups haven’t been able to get into the communities we usually get dogs from,” says Penny Stone, the executive director of the Victoria Humane Society.
In normal times, Stone’s organization welcomes animals from rural communities in the Interior and the North. The problem is that these aren’t normal times. Many of those communities have isolated themselves — and their stray dogs — during the pandemic. (We’re hearing something similar out of the U.S., where the pandemic is reported to have cut the flow of dogs from the South to the Northeast and Pacific Northwest.)
The door has opened a bit lately, though, with a few dogs making their way to Victoria. It might be a matter of those northern communities realizing that their homeless hounds will freeze to death if they aren’t shipped south. “There are tons of dogs that need help,” Stone says. She thinks the floodgates might open soon, though even if they do, there’s so much demand that the change might not be readily apparent.
The shortage is in stark contrast to what happened after the financial meltdown of 2008. Back then, the Victoria SPCA saw the number of pets abandoned for financial reasons jump by one third. The figure was even higher when it came to animals needing medical treatment.
Sometimes staff would show up in the morning and find a dog tied to the front railing. Sometimes there’d be a box of cats and kittens.
Will we see something similar after COVID restrictions ease? Once free to move around again, some people might decide to ditch their inconvenient pandemic pets.
“Are you sure you’re up to being a dog?” I asked Buck.
“Sure,” he said. “Lying in the sun. Eating free food. Humping the letter carrier. What’s not to like?”
“How about kids using your tail as a tow rope?” I replied. “Collars and leashes. Fleas. The cone of shame. Do you know how much time you have to spend butt-sniffing? It’s like being in middle management. Dogs have all sorts of weird habits.”
Buck stuck his nose in his private parts, then recoiled. “That’s disgusting.”
“What about the blind loyalty?” I continued. “It’s like being a White House press secretary, only warm-blooded.”
His head slumped. “Oh deer.”
I kept going. “Let’s be honest, you’re not great at obedience, either. They call you Buck for a reason.”
He sniffed. “That’s because The Man can’t handle my truth.”
“The man,” I said, “should be sure he wants a dog, not a temporary distraction.”
jknox@timescolonist.com
