Food, Home and Style

Why Pink Slips are Good for Pets (and What to Do When You Get a Job)

Sure, losing your job was stressful. For you. But for your pet, the longer you sit on the couch in a savings-sucking stupor the better.

Laura Goldstein left her post at This Old House magazine in March 2008 to become editor-in-chief of the start-up magazine Jewish Living. When Jewish Living folded six months later, Goldstein began working from home, cobbling together editorial projects while sending out resumes.

Unemployment was a shock and disappointment to her. Not so for her white-capped pionus parrot, Peewee.

“He used to spend long stretches of time at home alone in his cage, and when we’d come home in the evening, he’d be kind-of frantic and whiney,” Goldstein says. “Now, he hangs out with me while I’m working. He’s much less needy. I can just be in the house with him and he entertains himself. He used to have to be on top of whatever I was doing.”

Peewee the parrot working from home.

Like Peewee, many pets of formerly busy owners are experiencing the recession as a bonding opportunity. Americans are expected to spend more money on their pets this year than last, but plenty of pet owners have been cutting back on outsourced services, tending to their pets’ needs themselves.

New York City Dog Walkers, one of the city’s largest dog walking firms, was seeing 20 to 25 percent growth every year for seven years, says owner Paul Columbia. “Since the economy went bad, business has been flat. We have a lot of people, particularly in finance, who have been laid off. When they’re home, they don’t need a regular dog walker.”

Columbia’s 20-plus employees have seen their already-meager incomes decline. And that means someone else is scooping the poop. As any professional caregiver can tell you, no matter how many times the hired help takes the baby to the park, no one’s as good as Mommy.

All this raises the uncomfortable question of whether there’s a  potential downside to the economic recovery—for furry, fluffy and feathered (and scaly and leathered) friends. I hesitate to even apply for a “real” job in a real office because I worry about who would watch Paco, my parti-poodle, while he sleeps on the couch all day.

Fortunately, dogs and cats and parrots don’t have a sophisticated understanding of the future. But you do, and as a good pet owner, it may be time for you to think about how to prepare your pet for the Great Disappointment (aka, Your New Job).

If you’ve been out of work a week or two, chances are your pet will adjust to your re-disappearance, says Michelle Barlak, spokeswoman for the American Kennel Club and a dog trainer.  But if you’ve been snuggling with your puppy every morning for a month, letting him sit on your lap at the coffee shop while you check Facebook, he’s not going to react like you’ve recarpeted the room in rawhide when that routine changes.

It may be time for you to think about how to prepare your pet for the Great Disappointment (aka, Your New Job).

“You could run into separation anxiety if you spend all your time with your dog and then go back to work,” Barlak says. “You may see him bark, chew the slippers, have accidents in the house or get into things,”

Sge suggests easing your pet into your new routine by leaving him at home while you do errands so he can get used to being alone again. Try leaving a really clingy dog alone in another room, out of site, for five to 10 minutes. Once he’s okay with that, leave the house for short intervals. Run a tape recorder while you’re gone to hear how he handled the separation.

Once you start your new job, provide comforting substitutes and fun toys. “Maybe put a nightshirt of yours in their bed, with your scent on it,” Barlak says. “They have a lot of different interactive toys you can hide treats inside of, like Kongs. Or really sturdy toys they can’t chew up and choke on.”

Take comfort in the fact that dogs and other animals don’t have the same concept of time as humans. As long at their needs are met—food, water, a place to go, and a toy, they’ll usually be okay. “Most dogs will not sit there and think about how you are gone and how lonely they are,” says Barlak.

A new job seem about as likely as your un-housebroken mutt winning Best in Show at Westminster? Research shows that spending time with a pet can be good for your health. Until some new company comes sniffing around with a full-time opportunity, look at this together time as free, fluffy therapy. And who knows—you might even make a connection at the dog park that will lead to your next job.

But will you want to take it?

Goldstein is looking for a full-time position, but with a new ambivalence. “I’m going to feel guilty about it in a way I didn’t before,” she admits. “The perfect situation would be a permanent, off-site job where I could rent a little office space so I didn’t have to always be in my home, but I could bring Peewee with me. That would be ideal.”

Wendy Paris is a writer living in New York. You can see more of her work at her website, WendyParis.com.

Tags: pets, The Unemployed Life