We have received many follow up questions after the first post on COVID-19, and therefore decided to consult a number of experts to examine how our working from home affects our pets, and what we should be mindful of.
The Risks and Challenges
Talking to pet owners in our community, many of them report that their darlings show stress-related behaviors like chewing on your favorite shoes and furniture, excessive meowing, whining, and barking, growing clingy, overgrooming, and shedding. Here are the four main reasons that explain these behaviors:
Routine Changes: In general, pets love routine and don’t like any changes to their established routine. With the current coronavirus epidemic, many humans are working from home, which disrupts all established routines and can upset your furry family members.
Emotional Anxiety: Even though pets don’t understand what coronavirus is and how it affects the world in general, pets are internalizing some of the anxious signals their humans – concerned about their health, their jobs, their loved ones, their rent payments – are transmitting.
Lack of Personal Space: Although our lovely pets may enjoy getting to spend more time with us, most of them need some distance from time to time. The sudden lack of personal space at home, with children especially being all over them, can really stress your pet out.
Boredom: Have you considered that your pet may be bored? Maybe they used to accompany you to a market or brewery, or they were used to hanging out with their pet pals in the park. While they are happy that you are home more, not that not much is happening, their boredom can manifest itself in clinginess and anxiety.
What Can You Do to Help?
There are a number of things you can do to help your pet through these challenging times:
This is a lot to take in, and to make you smile, we would like to share this super cute blog with you where people working from home with their cats, dogs, and bunnies supporting them have posted great photos of how it is working out for them: https://www.boredpanda.com/pet-coworkers-quarantine/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic