Elizabeth is my human. We share our house with a couple of other people who are not Elizabeth, so I didn’t learn their names. Four years ago, I moved to Chicago from the burbs. The parks and the lake here rule, but recently, Mayor Lightfoot closed them because humans can’t follow directions. She should have tried clicker training.

A few weeks ago, Elizabeth and one of the not Elizabeths (the one with fur on his face) were talking about “the coronavirus.” Furry Face lives here to walk and feed me when Elizabeth isn’t home. We have a lot in common. He likes to look out the window, sit in the yard, and take nice long poops, but he does it inside the house which makes me uncomfortable.

Elizabeth is working from home because of the pandemic. I can tell it’s a bad thing for humans, but if I’m being honest, it’s the best thing to happen to me. Before, my days were spent taking walks, napping, and occasionally eating a bully stick. Now that she’s home, I get a ton of delicious snacks — carrots or even a Jay’s barbecue chip. When she has dinner, I practice hypnosis by staring into her big beautiful brown eyes until she gives me a little steak.

Elizabeth is an enneagram 7, which is a breed of human that requires social interaction. She breaks the stay-at-home rules occasionally by driving us into other neighborhoods to walk with friends. Once we went all the way to Evanston, where all the posh dogs live, like yorkies, Labradoodles, and Newfoundlands — the kind of dogs that need designer haircuts like Kardashians. I never need a haircut. Elizabeth says that I look like Mark Wahlberg and Sylvester Stallone had a dog baby. It makes sense because we’re swole.

We pull up to Adrienne’s condo, and I feel extremely cute in my reversible blue and orange jacket. Adrienne immediately comments on my bald spot as if I'm not standing there. As we start walking, she's at it again, saying that I “walk well.” I have four legs, bitch! Of course I walk well. I don’t care about visiting Adrienne ever again.

I don’t want to keep bragging when humans are suffering. My kind likes to keep it simple. We want to be fed, loved, and take a couple of satisfying pees on a variety of lawns. It hurts to see Elizabeth cry or hear the tone of her friends' voices when they talk about this virus. For now, I can only curl up to my bestie and occasionally growl at her toes so she knows that I always have her back.