Work, buses, and socialising

So the world is starting to open up again. For weeks now we’ve been able to leave our homes and travel on buses and visit non-essential shops, but it’s only in the last few days that I’ve considered lockdown to be actually over. Work has restarted for us. I’m lucky to have a job that’s taken me back, the hospitality sector is never very secure and of the 21 people employed in the kitchen I work in only eight of us were able to come back.

We’re currently open Thursday to Sunday, with shifts taking place on Wednesday to clean and prep food for the coming weekend. This gives everyone two days off at the beginning of the week, for the first time since working there we have a “weekend”, two days off to look forward to and be able to plan things for every week. It’s only for the next few weeks until business picks back up, but it’s a nice way of easing back into working life.

The menu is a lot smaller now, less staff on shifts, less prep to do, less meals to learn, they’ve made it easy on us. But even so the first weekend back was hard. The first shift even, a Thursday morning, made my feet hurt in a way they haven’t since I first started kitchen work, I was walking less than a third of the distance I would do during a lockdown day, but standing in place was causing me so much more ache than walking ever did. I’m also leading some shifts, acting as kitchen supervisor and being in charge of the small teams and tiny menu. It’s a job I did full time for a few months a couple of years ago, but ultimately the small amount of extra money from the promotion never made up for the added stress for me. Now I’m mainly doing it as a favour to my manager, a good friend of mine, and since we’re having our wages topped up by the furlough scheme I’m not actually getting any pay rise at all. It’s fine for these quiet, uncertain days, and I am happy to have a job at all. I complain about work and I insisted that I didn’t want to return, but the truth is I enjoy it there, the people I work with I largely consider as friends, and the work, while stressful at times, is satisfying and somewhat rhythmic – nothing feels better than it being a busy shift and getting into the flow of sending order after order upstairs in a timely manner and everything just coming together nicely.

New start times of 10am as opposed to the old start times of 7am have made a huge difference as well. There’s time now to get up, have a coffee and read/internet for an hour or so and then take Shadow out for an hour or so in the forest to chase sticks. It’s a nice habit, and when you’re stood in a bright, hot, busy kitchen on an afternoon it’s nice to remember the morning light of the woods where you started your day. Sadly for Shadow it also means she’s starting to re-learn how to be left by me. I worry sometimes that the lockdown has made her over-dependant on me and that she’ll struggle to adapt back into the routine of being alone at home, or being left with somebody else. Luckily for now my friend is still staying with me, luckily she’s one of the eight returning work mates as well, so we can work our shifts around each other and look after both the “kids” while the other works, this means that neither Shadow or the little girl have have their routines too disrupted, and they both get to stay with somebody they trust and know very well.

A nicer side of the service industry starting to get back to normal is how nice it’s been to go out and socialise again, and I say this as somebody who is more than happy to stay inside with my Xbox as opposed to going out and spending time with groups of people. But the simple pleasures of reading a book in a coffee shop while waiting for a friend, or going for a few drinks and ending up back at somebody’s flat have been experiences that even I missed during the long months of everything being closed.

Comforting, even if everything must be served in takeaway containers

That time of the….every few months?

So one day before I was due to fly to Porto (which has obviously been cancelled due to virus stuff) and once again just before I thought I may go and visit my parents (getting away from the city would be a nice back-up holiday plan) Shadow comes on heat. She first came on heat very close to her turning six month, by which I mean I came downstairs one day and when she flopped onto her back for belly scratches I saw drops of blood on her privates, that was all. Easy, I thought, not sure why people are so dramatic about this coming into heat business. I was mostly upset because I had been planning to return to my parents’ and quarantine up there for a couple of weeks and then had to change my plans because Shadow’s parents live with my parents and I didn’t want her dad getting any incestuous thoughts (I don’t really think he would have but always better safe than sorry!).

The day she came on heat the first time, she looks how I feel when my period arrives.

So this time, when I came downstairs one morning a couple of weeks ago and found blood drops once again between her legs I wasn’t worried. Last time she seemed to clean up any blood from herself before I even saw her in the morning, and her behaviour changed very little apart from a slight increase in neediness. It appears though that her first heat was just a warm up heat, this one must be real. Now when I go downstairs there’s lots of blood drops, or blood smears on my floor (lovely white floors, very dramatic), she jumps up incessantly when greeting (which I keep reminding myself she’d almost stopped doing), she can no longer be trusted to return to me if a male dog walks by and shows an interest (I’d taken for granted her basic obedience to me), and her genitals, which last time looked exactly as they always did, are now huge and swollen and seem somehow in your face when she lies on her back (my friend says they look like balls, I can’t help but agree, and I’m not a fan).

“Please distract me from this blood-filled hell” – Shadow, probably

It’s been about two weeks now and there are still blood drops on my floor, but less of them each day. I’m not sure if she’ll move into the next phase of heat after they stop or if she’s in that now. For now I have bought a heavy duty extendable lead for use in the park and I’m trying to mostly take her to secluded places where she can be off-lead without risk of any male dogs finding their way to her. I’m looking at options of spaying her, I don’t want to breed her myself but I also don’t want to spay her too early and affect her growth or behaviour before she’s fully grown. So I’m unsure whether to wait until she’s two years old and get her spayed traditionally, or look for a vet offering an “ovary sparing spay” before then. In an ovary sparing spay the ovaries are (surprise surprise) spared and left intact, this means that all the hormones needed for healthy growth and development are still able to be released when needed, it also means though that she would continue having the symptoms of going into heat alone with her regular cycle. She wouldn’t be able to get pregnant, so I wouldn’t need to worry quite as much about other dogs, but she would think she was in heat like any other bitch and the behavioural changes, the jumpiness, the clinginess, the risk of ignoring my recall commands, would all remain. As would the swollen “balls” she loves parading around the place. Is it stupid to base decisions of your dog’s future on you not wanting to see an inflated vulva? Probably. Luckily there are other things to decide, so it’s not just based on that, it may be a factor though. I’m not sure if anyone even offers OSS around my area, or how much more it would cost than the traditional operation, but it’s still something I’m looking into. That or wait another year and a bit, I guess I’ll see when she next comes on heat and how bad it is, and I’ll do some more research into the possible side effects of both procedures into dogs in general and German shepherd specifically if I can find any (any reading recommendations/experiences gratefully received!).

So far her prey drive still outweighs her sex drive, so it’s not too hard to distract her from other dogs by simply picking up a stick or stone from the floor. So far.

Lockdown life

There seems to be no chronological logic to what I post and when, but since my whole life right now is the way it is due to Covid 19 it seems like a good time to talk about it.

I was furloughed about mid-March and the government is paying me 80% of my average wage to stay home and not spread the virus. Lovely. Obviously with a young, energetic dog in the house I am unable to to literally stay home, but it’s a good excuse to avoid getting on buses or straying too close to the city centre. Instead Shadow and I have been exploring more and more around our town. It turns out that when you have the time to stop and check out that overgrown looking path, or step over that broken bit of fence you can find so many new beautiful places to spend time in!

She spends most of her time on walks just behind me, until I want to take a photograph and then she always seems to be in front of the lens somehow

Just before the pandemic kicked off I had been feeling stressed and overworked, I was getting up early, trying to make sure Shadow was properly exercised before I carted her off to whichever of my friends had kindly agreed to hang out with her while I was at work, rushing home to be able to fit in a nice, long walk before dinner, and trying to squeeze in some all important training sessions before bed. In the early days of having her it felt like maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a dog parent, it felt like I never had the chance to get to know her, like I spent more time stressing over who would look after her the next day than enjoying the time we were together. I guess it’s similar to how many single parents feel about their children. The last three months have definitely been a godsend in giving us that bonding time and I’ve learnt so much more about her and she’s become so much more responsive to me.

She’s actually learned that when I throw a stick it’s more fun to keep hold of it in case I might want to throw it again than just leaving it where it falls

It’s also helped that my friend has been staying with us the last few weeks as well with her 5 year old daughter. Shadow met this girl on the very first day she came to the city and they’ve been great friends ever since. Whenever I’m busy or tired or for whatever reason don’t want to play tug of war for the thousandth time, she has a playmate who’s always ready to test her pulling power against another kid. They’re about the same weight as well, so they’re a good match. She’s been meeting more dogs as well lately, some successfully, some unsuccessfully (teenage gsd rebellion phase strikes again!), so we’re working on how to say hello politely and not bound up straight into somebody’s face without ever a sniff hello first. It’s strange that it’s been during a lockdown that she’s probably been more social than ever. I guess the early days of only being allowed outside to exercise/walk your dog really payed off for all the dogs who now get to spend hours a day walking around parks with their owners.

As the Covid situation starts to wind down I’m wondering what our next adventures will be. Certainly now we can hope to start travelling more we can go to visit the Peak District, the Lake District, fells and moors slightly further afield than our town’s borders. But I’m also thinking of getting her a pet passport and looking into visiting mainland Europe for a trip. I’m trying to plan a train ride across countries with my friend who’s staying, but the logistics of rabies vaccinations and vet appointments all seem a bit uncertain right now. It’s something fun to scheme about though, much nicer than the plots and plans about when I could go to work and who would be on puppy duty while I did so that made up my pre-lockdown life.

The lockdown will end, and normal life will resume, but I feel a lot more ready for it now. I guess sometimes you need to be forced off work to really remember that there’s more to life sometimes.