September 22, 2021 • 29 mins
Marina wanted companionship during the loneliness of quarantine, so she got a COVID pet. But nothing went as planned.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. In this series, we've already talked about
the roles that animals play in the search for new
diseases and in vaccine development. This coronavirus SARS covi two
most likely came from a bat originally and then maybe
found its way to another animal on the way to humans.
SARS one came from bats via Asian palm civets, while
(00:30):
mirrors came from bats, jumped to camels then to us.
HIV came from primates, and lots of human diseases are
spread by mosquitoes, like malaria, Zeka, dengae, Westnile, and yellow fever.
Some vaccines are grown in chicken eggs or even passed
through blended animal organs. In eighteen eighty five, the modern
era of immunization was brought in when Louis Pasteur injected
(00:50):
spinal cord material from rabbits into a nine year old
boy to protect him from getting rabies. Today, in the
early stages of development, prospective vaccines are always tested on
animals for safety, to make sure they won't kill or
sicken the person who gets it, for immune response, to
make sure the vaccine induces the right kind of antibodies
and t cell responses from the body for dosage to
(01:12):
see how much vaccine is needed to induce the right responses,
and to tinker with the formula to see what kind
of ingredients will make the vaccine lasts longer and in
general work better. Both the Maderna and Fiser vaccines were
tested in mice and Rhesus macaques at various points, although
because of the urgency of the pandemic, some of these
animal trials were happening alongside the human trials. The Oxford
(01:32):
astrasenticive vaccine is based on a virus found in chimpanzee poop,
and another vaccine in the works was based on a
virus founded in guerrilla feces. Researchers in Belgium are using
antibodies from llamas to create even more protection against coronavirus.
Animals have also been affected by coronavirus. Cats and dogs
have gotten the virus, so have gorillas and otters. Naughty
(01:54):
of the Tiger at the Bronxoo got it. In New
South Wales, Australia, fifteen dogs on their way to a
shelter were killed by authorities to protect humans from spreading
COVID during the handoff and in Denmark, seventeen million minks
were cold when two hundred farms found coronavirus outbreaks among
their animals. Almost as soon as this pandemic began, you
(02:14):
started hearing stories about COVID pets, about how the loneliness
of coronavirus created an opening of arms from humans to
dogs and cats, especially about how we weren't just using
animals to get us out of the pandemic, but how
we were using them to get through it. In this episode,
we're going to talk to an American living in Sweden
who opened her arms to a new puppy, and she'll
(02:35):
tell us how it didn't work out as planned, not
even close. This story might make some people mad, but
before you listen, I ask you to put yourself in
the shoes of our storyteller. If you can't and you're
so mad you have to shout at someone, send me
an angry tweet at Sean Revive from my Heart Radio
and School of Humans. I'm Sean Revive and this is
(02:57):
long shot. My name is Marina. I live in Gothenburg, Sweden,
which is the second largest and first best city in Sweden.
But as you can probably tell, I am American, not Swedish.
(03:22):
I should start off by telling you that Marina is
a friend. My wife and I once stayed with her
in Sweden over Christmas. We ate a ton of pickled fish,
and because I'm like ten years old, we joked a
lot about Swedish chef. Anyway, Marina has been living in
Sweden's twenty sixteen. She loves Sweden for a long time.
(03:46):
It was her dream to live there, and she's finally
doing it. The first case of COVID nineteen in Sweden
comes in January twenty twenty, and then there are no
more cases until late February, and there is no confirmed
community spread until March. But by April, the state epidemiologist
of Sweden says that he believes between five and ten
percent of Swedes are already carrying the virus. Marina works
(04:10):
for a big Swedish tech company and eventually stops going
to the office and starts working from home. Working from home,
my daily life was like waking up, like sometimes I
would get dressed, sometimes I'd just wear pajamas all day.
Sometimes I'd go take a walk, sometimes I wouldn't. Like
I was having a really hard time sticking to any
sort of schedule because the days were all the same
(04:33):
and there was nothing to do. For years, Marina thought
about getting a dog, and like a lot of people,
coronavirus and the loneliness that comes with it is the
turning point. I was just at my wits end, like
so sick of just being by myself. So I decided, like,
now is the time I'll get a dog. I can
be at home and train the dog. It seemed like
(04:55):
a good idea. She has a few reasons for wanting
a dog. One companionship, someone to be around the house with,
two giving her life some structured taking a dog and walks,
giving the dog food. It would give me something to
focus on that wasn't just me. Then also this idea
of you know, I've lived in Sweden five years and
(05:17):
it has been challenging to make friends here and have
a community. And I thought that by getting a dog,
I would be able to meet other dog owners and
like it would open up my life in the human
sense as well. But the problem is a lot of
people in Sweden and millions of people across the globe,
see the pandemic as a good reason to get a dog.
(05:39):
So it was impossible to get a dog for love
or money, Like, no matter how much you were willing
to pay, there were just like no dogs available. A
friend tells her that he got his dog via a
site called blockett. It's like a Swedish Craigslist. You can
buy and sell stuff on there. You can also find
a pet from individual owners. So that wasn't my first choice,
but I decided to go with it because it seemed
(06:02):
like the only way I could get a dog here.
So I had to message a bunch of people. Like
none of the dogs worked out. They were just like
being snapped up really quickly. There's a really hot dog market.
So finally, when I found this super cute little black
and white French bulldog puppy, I was so excited. I
messaged the woman, gave her my whole spiel, and it
(06:25):
was like interviewing for an apartment, Like I had to
sell her on choosing me as the dog owner. I
sort of leaned on being American because Swedish people kind
of like Americans by default, So I was like, I
live here and I live alone, and I just would
really love a dog. I think it would really help
me like integrate into Swedish society. Marina's sales pitch works
(06:50):
and she gets the dog. But the dog is two
hours away and she doesn't have a car or a
driver's license. So I asked a friend of mine, a
Swedish friend, to drive me there to pick up the dog.
So she agreed and we rented a car, went down there,
little road trip. She meets the dog in person. He's adorable.
(07:13):
He's a bit freaked out, obviously because a stranger is
taking him, but he seemed okay. He was fine in
the car, so he picked him up. I paid for him,
got all his dog paperwork, etc. It seemed fine, like
the woman seemed normal, and I took him home. Finally,
she has a dog, a companion during these shitty times.
(07:35):
But the shitty times aren't over. So Marina is home
in her apartment, no longer alone, but with her new puppy.
Before she even gets him, she does what she calls
a name storm, basically a brainstorming for a name with
ranking based on various criteria. She comes up with Roscoe. Yeah,
(07:58):
so he's a French bulldog, like really cute little pointy
bat ears black and white for a little black nose,
and these like little puppy paws that are a bit
like out of proportion with his body, so they felt
kind of like big for him. But he was quite
thin when I got him, so I was like trying
(08:20):
to fatten him up a little bit. But very sweet
with like the most quintessential like puppy eyes. You know,
he would look up at you and be like the cutest.
Marina quickly figures out that Roscoe might need more attention
than an average puppy. When she picked him up. The
owner told Marina that Roscoe was already housebroken. He is not,
(08:41):
so he immediately just started peeing everywhere and being a puppy.
And at first I thought like, oh, it's because he's
like freaked out. He's in this new environment. He's not
used to me like I thought it was just how
puppies were, not having hot a dog before. The next
few days are chaos day and night. All day and night,
(09:02):
Marina is on dog duty. He wouldn't sleep through the night.
He wanted to play all the time. He wanted to
chew on everything, like things that sound like so obvious
to experience dog owners. I was going through it for
the first time, both because of the lack of sleep
because of his weird hours, but also just like taking
him out to pee a hundred times a day, and
(09:23):
he was peeing way more than was normal, but I
just didn't realize it at first, but he was so
so cute and he started like bonding with me, and
we were getting along as well as can be given
just how much work he was. By the fourth day
with Roscoe, Marina is exhausted, abnormally exhausted, and at first
(09:47):
she thinks it's just a lack of sleep from taking
care of the new puppy at all hours. So by Wednesday,
I was feeling like really run down and just tired,
and I thought it was just because of this like
change in my life with the dog and not being
prepared to have a puppy. But that I get a
call from my friend Sarah, the one that I went
(10:08):
to pick him up with, and she said that she
had tested positive for COVID and that I had been exposed.
So I'm like, fuck, I'm gonna have to get a test.
She's able to get a test the next day at
a clinic down the street. But then I came home
and I'm like, now, what, Like I may or may
not have COVID, I have this dog. I still have
(10:30):
to take the dog outside. It's cruel to like not
take him on walks. So I spent that first day
just like furiously contacting doctors and like anyone that I
thought might have an answer to this, Like am I
allowed to go outside? Can I leave my apartment? And
if I can't, what the hell am I going to do?
(10:51):
You're probably thinking, Wait, isn't Sweden at this point world
famous for its lack of a lockdown for its nationwide
experiment in creating coronavirus herd immunity. That isn't exactly true.
It is true that through October twenty twenty, Sweden had
not imposed any strict laws for its citizens, while other
European countries are in full lockdown mode with legal implications
(11:14):
for those who break the rules. Swedes can still go
to bars and restaurants, and Swedish kids can go to school.
But as daily coronavirus cases start to explode from just
a few hundred in September to more than three thousand
a day in late October, Sweden's national Health agency recommends
stricter measures in harder hit regions, including Gothenburg. There's still
(11:36):
just recommendations, but on October twenty ninth, the day before
Marina finds out she's been exposed to coronavirus on her
road trip. Residents are asked to stop going in most
indoor places, and for those who actually test positive for
COVID nineteen there are special rules. But Marina for now
is just trying to get a jump on things in
case she tests positive. So I finally got the ok
(12:00):
from various powers that be that as long as I
stayed away from other humans and dogs, I could take
him outside. But he's a puppy. He doesn't understand this,
Like he wants to go sniff other dogs butts and
like go near other people. So I had to really
be careful to keep him on leash and just like
keep him away from people while I was waiting for
(12:24):
the test result, which she gets on October thirty first,
So happy Halloween to me. Turns out I did have COVID,
I still had a puppy, and now I had to
just be at home until I no longer had COVID,
you know however long that took. For two weeks, Marina
mostly stays inside her apartment with Roscoe. It's a third
(12:46):
floor walk up with one bedroom in a balcony pretty
big for one person, but still a Swedish apartment. I
would take him, you know, to do his business on
the balcony, take him on walks twice a day. But
it became like incredibly stressful because not only was I
feeling like increasingly more sick, but he still demanded all
(13:08):
this time and attention and energy. So I had a cough,
I had like aches and pains, some diarrhea, like it
felt kind of like a food poisoning plus of flu
at the same time. Type of a situation. Marina is
stuck at home and feels like total shit, and then
(13:28):
things get even worse when Roscoe gets sick too. So
in addition to his like weird like peeing all the time,
he started throwing up his food and had like some
weird poop and stuff. And I'm like, oh no, like
what do I do Because I can't take him to
the vet because I have COVID. She finds an app
(13:49):
that allows her to get a telemedicine appointment, but for dogs,
I was able to talk to a vet over the app,
and so I had several appointments that way, just asking
like is this normal puppy stuff? The vets tell her
they can't know exactly what's wrong with Roscoe without examining him.
But she can't get him examined because she has to
(14:10):
quarantine until she's not contagious. So then during this time,
like the two weeks that we were like cooped up
in my apartment, he woke up in the middle of
the night and started throwing up, and I'm like, crap,
it's three in the morning. I just like went to
bed not too long ago, like I'm exhausted. Now I
have to clean up dog barf. I'm cleaning up this
(14:31):
dog barf, and then it turns out there are worms
in it, and I was just like, just kill me now,
Like my dog has worms, like literal living worms, because
this is a thing that dogs can get. So luckily
I had some warm medication for him already, so I
gave him that. But that was like one of the
(14:51):
lowest moments where I was just like, my apartment is disgusting.
It's full of COVID. It's full of like dog pee,
it's full of like you know, puke with worms in it.
Like this is just so correct. So now Marina's got
COVID and her puppy is puking up worms, and she
can't really do much about it. Plus, she's starting to
(15:14):
question if Roscoe's previous owner lied to her. He hadn't
been trained at all, Like he didn't know how to
walk on a leash. She didn't know a lot of
basic dog stuff that he should know by being six
months old. So then I started thinking, like was he
just not taken care of? Like did someone mistreat him?
His temperament was very sweet, He just like didn't know
(15:35):
anything about how to be a dog. So for a
couple of weeks, Marina's sick and Roscoe's sick, but eventually
Marina starts feeling better, her fever goes away and her
cough becomes mild. Her doctor tells her she can stop quarantining.
That was like the big day for me because a
malt I could go out and do all the things
(15:56):
I needed to do. And the number one thing I
needed to do was take Roscoe to the vet to
see if there was something wrong with him or what
was up with his situation. The vet tells her that
Roscoe had been underfed by his previous owners, but he
seems relatively healthy otherwise. She isn't sure why he's peeing
so much, but she gives Marina some special food to
(16:18):
help with the puking. In Sweden, all dogs have an
ID chip that's like put into their little puppy bodies
to identify them if they get lost. It's true. All
Swedish dogs need to have a chip or a tattoo
marked with a unique ID number, and they have to
be registered in the Swedish Board of Agricultures Dog Register.
The register keeps a record of popular names for Swedish dogs.
(16:41):
Molly and Bella are the most common in twenty twenty.
Luda and Siga are close behind. So in addition to
the chip, Roscoe also has a little puppy passport and
it turns out his chip number doesn't match the number
in his passport. They're one digit off one digit And
I'm like, why is that? And she's like I don't know.
(17:04):
But her whole demeanor change and she was like, you
need to get this sordid asap because it is not
allowed for you to be in Sweden with a dog
that is improperly registered. She leaves the vet appointment wondering
how the hell she got into this mess. Maybe he
was smuggled in maybe that would explain all his health
(17:25):
issues that he had come from some like Eastern European
puppy mill, and I had bought him without knowing any
of this. So I went home and I'm like, I
really don't know what to do, Like I don't know
how do I resolve the situation, Like who do I
talk to to get my dog legal? With no idea
(17:48):
what to do next, she calls the police. A detective
tells her to bring the dog into the station. The
first day I was free to leave my apartment, I
went to the vet. The second day I was free
to leave my apartment, I went to the police station
downtown with my dog. The Swedish detective there doesn't know
what to do either, but he calls the Swedish Department
(18:10):
of Agriculture and they tell Marina to go home and
wait for their call. I come home, give Roscoe a
new toy because he's been such a champ about all
of these trips and he doesn't know what's happening, but
he's been like really cooperative as I like him. All
over town. That night, she gets a call from a
woman at the Department of Agriculture. She explains to Marina
(18:33):
that if the chip by D number doesn't match the
doggy passport number, then she has only two choices and
they both completely suck. Option one is you can do
a two month quarantine with a dog in which he
has to stay in your home, not be around any
(18:53):
other humans or animals, and we reserve the right to
like check up on you, and if you break the
rules of the quarantine, they're illegal consequences. So I'm like, Okay,
that seems really extreme. Two whole months of that, and
I live alone in an apartment, Like, it wouldn't be
easy in the best of situations. So, while already living
(19:17):
in quarantine or Sweden's relatively mild version of it, she's
told that one option for Roscoe is to do an
extreme two month quarantine with an unhousebroken, worm, puking, adorable puppy,
with no help from friends, family, or even a vent an.
Option two was that I could choose to put him down,
(19:39):
And I'm like, is there option three? Is there? Option zero? Like,
help me out here? Is there anything else we can do?
I explain the situation that I still am getting over COVID.
I'm an American, I don't have like anyone living here
to help me, it wouldn't be easy, and not to
mention taking two months off of work, and just like
(20:01):
the cruelty of not letting a puppy like be around
other or dogs. It just seemed like even if it
were possible, it would suck and it would like harm
his emotional development as a dog to do this. They
give Marina twenty four hours to make a decision quarantine
(20:22):
or put Roscoe down. So at first I was thinking, like,
there has to be another way, and so all of
my friends and sisters are like trying to dream up
like other alternatives, like maybe he can go stay in
a kennel, maybe there's a friend who can take him,
and I'm like no, they specifically said he's like not
(20:44):
allowed to leave my apartment. Marina is also living in
Sweden on a visa, so she's nervous about doing anything
that can get her kicked out of the country. So
I slept on it, I cried, I snuggled him. I
was like a mess. And then the next day I
woke up and I was I would just like start
(21:05):
crying at any moment, and poor Roscoe, like he knew
something was wrong, and he would come up to me
and like lick my hand and like try to comfort me,
and and I'm like, oh god, I'm like trying to decide,
like do I keep you alive or not? But he
has to make a decision. The twenty four hours go
by extremely fast, and then ultimately I realized, like I
(21:28):
am not healthy enough to do this, Like I am
still recovering from COVID, I am not well, and without
any help, I won't be able to do this. I'm
gonna get sicker. He's gonna get sicker. And the thing
that really kind of tipped the scales for me was
thinking of like just how cool it was to him
(21:50):
to keep him cooped up with me in the apartment
without access to the medical care that he needed, Like
he needed to go back to the vet for more tests,
and I wasn't going to be allowed to take him
even to the vet. So Marina makes any credibly difficult choice.
I called the vet again to make a second appointment,
(22:10):
and the second appointment was to have him put down.
The next day, she tries to give Roscoe the best
morning of his life. She gives him all his favorite treats,
takes him on a walk, gives him extra cuddles, all
the things he loves. I was really struggling to keep
my own emotions in check, and I didn't want that
(22:33):
to like worry him. So it was just really awful.
So I put him back in the carrier. Call another uber.
At the vet's office, everyone is really kind and empathetic.
So you go there, they check you in, They take
you to a special room that's sort of like a
private room where you can be with your dog, just
(22:55):
the two of you. Because it's Sweden and they love candles,
there was a lit candle in there, so it's almost
this life chapel feeling in a way. There's a high
table covered with a blanket. But Marina can't let Roscoe
out of her arms. Yet he liked it when I
would hold him, so I just had him in my
arms to the point that my arms started getting really sore,
(23:18):
but I refuse to put him down. But then the
nurse comes in and explains what's going to happen. First,
they'll give him a sedative to make him calm. Then
once it's taken effect, they'll give Roscoe a second injection
and that's the one that kills him. I put him
on the table and patted his fur and stroked behind
(23:41):
his ears as he got the first shot. Then he
started getting really sleepy, to the point that because of
the sedative, like he wasn't able to stand up on
his legs anymore. So he's just sort of like laying
there and I'm petting him, And then the veterinarian came
in and gave the second shot, and I remember just
(24:03):
like looking at him and like one moment he was
alive and then the next moment he wasn't, you know.
And it's hard to explain, but even though his body
was exactly the same outwardly, like you could just tell
he's not alive anymore. There's no pain for Roscoe in
his last moments, only for Marina. They leave her in
(24:27):
the room alone, and I just like cried like a maniac.
And I had a mask on at this point, so
like the inside of my mask was all snotty and
like tears everywhere, and it was very uncomfortable to just
cry that hard with a mask on. So that's another
kind of like COVID reality. It's like you can't even
(24:48):
properly cry, you can't ugly cry in the same way
because you're going to get snow all over your mask.
She stays in the room for about fifteen minutes, Then
she thanks the staff at the vet and then leaves
and walks all the way home. On that walk back,
I passed so many people with dogs and just knowing that, like,
(25:09):
well they have their dog, Like why can't I have
my dog. It was just so intense, like getting the dog,
falling in love with the dog, and then losing the
dog in such quick succession. My head was spinning and
my heart just hurt. Even though I feel like I
made the right call to put him down, it was
(25:30):
really really hard to do. Had it not been COVID,
if I would have been able to rely on more
help from friends or get him to a kennel or
you know, if there wasn't a pandemic, I might have
found a workaround. But I wasn't able to. She gets
(25:51):
home and the apartment is a mess. The apartment is
like a tornado hit it. It's full of like puppy
things everywhere, all sorts of puppy things that hadn't even
been opened or used. And I that first day just
like putting everything into trash bags and boxes and figuring
out what I can give away and basically like getting
(26:14):
my apartment back to how it was before I brought
him home the month before. But even now I still
have a bunch of puppy things in the closet that
I don't know what to do with. Roscoe went to
Doggie Heaven late in twenty twenty. I went through a
period of essentially grief, because when you lose someone you love,
(26:36):
even if it's a dog, like they're going to be
moments where you're sad. And I was emotionally and physically
exhausted afterwards and still kind of recovering. And then I
went through a period of what I had assumed was
like grief slash, just decompressing from this, but it kept
going on and on and on, and so finally, by
(26:59):
like early January, I knew something was wrong, and I
talked to my doctor again and I said that I
was worried. I was depressed because I wasn't sleeping, I
wasn't eating, I was tired, like it just didn't feel
it didn't feel like COVID, but it didn't feel normal.
So that's when I found out, after a series of
medical appointments, that not only did I have COVID, but
(27:23):
then I got what is called long COVID. If you
aren't familiar with how life destroying long COVID can be
for some people, we covered it two episodes ago. For me,
it was manifesting as a lot of like mental health
stuff and just exhaustion, fatigue, also weird things like I
started getting headaches which I never got before. I had
(27:46):
like weird body temperature regulation issues. I would feel cold
all the time. Looking back, even now, I don't know
how much of like my post COVID health problems were
tied to this long COVID thing versus just tied to
like emotional exhaustion slash pression from going through this like
(28:07):
really hard experience in such a concentrated time. I think
essentially it was so stressful and so much anxiety and
effort in such a concentrated period that it sort of
like shot my nervous system and it's taken me months
to get past it. I would not recommend to anyone
(28:28):
else to get COVID at all, but also to get
an unhousebroken puppy and COVID on the same day was
just sheer bad luck, you know. In getting Roscoe, Marina
was looking for companionship both dog and human while living
in a foreign country. She was also looking for structure
during a time when structure completely broke down because of
(28:50):
the pandemic. I think, like a lot of new pet owners,
she thought her pet would open up new world. In
a slightly different world, I would have gone all those
things I wanted, but in a COVID world, I didn't
get any of them. On the next episode of long Shot,
(29:11):
we'll hear about a new, lower cost vaccine being developed
for COVID nineteen one that could help poorer countries worldwide
get access. Long Shot is a production of School of
Humans and iHeartRadio. Today's episode was produced, written, and narrated
by me Sean Revive. A co producer is Gabby Watts.
(29:32):
Yay special thanks to Noah Brown and iHeartRadio, Amy shirt
Left and Cleo Contirapti. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crowley,
and Brandon Barr. Fact checking for this episode is by
Adam Shadoo. Long Shot was scored by Jason Shannon. The
score was mixed by Vic Stafford. Sound design and audio
mixed was by Harper Harris with Tune Welders. School of
(30:02):
Humans
School of Humans. In this series, we've already talked about
the roles that animals play in the search for new
diseases and in vaccine development. This coronavirus SARS covi two
most likely came from a bat originally and then maybe
found its way to another animal on the way to humans.
SARS one came from bats via Asian palm civets, while
(00:30):
mirrors came from bats, jumped to camels then to us.
HIV came from primates, and lots of human diseases are
spread by mosquitoes, like malaria, Zeka, dengae, Westnile, and yellow fever.
Some vaccines are grown in chicken eggs or even passed
through blended animal organs. In eighteen eighty five, the modern
era of immunization was brought in when Louis Pasteur injected
(00:50):
spinal cord material from rabbits into a nine year old
boy to protect him from getting rabies. Today, in the
early stages of development, prospective vaccines are always tested on
animals for safety, to make sure they won't kill or
sicken the person who gets it, for immune response, to
make sure the vaccine induces the right kind of antibodies
and t cell responses from the body for dosage to
(01:12):
see how much vaccine is needed to induce the right responses,
and to tinker with the formula to see what kind
of ingredients will make the vaccine lasts longer and in
general work better. Both the Maderna and Fiser vaccines were
tested in mice and Rhesus macaques at various points, although
because of the urgency of the pandemic, some of these
animal trials were happening alongside the human trials. The Oxford
(01:32):
astrasenticive vaccine is based on a virus found in chimpanzee poop,
and another vaccine in the works was based on a
virus founded in guerrilla feces. Researchers in Belgium are using
antibodies from llamas to create even more protection against coronavirus.
Animals have also been affected by coronavirus. Cats and dogs
have gotten the virus, so have gorillas and otters. Naughty
(01:54):
of the Tiger at the Bronxoo got it. In New
South Wales, Australia, fifteen dogs on their way to a
shelter were killed by authorities to protect humans from spreading
COVID during the handoff and in Denmark, seventeen million minks
were cold when two hundred farms found coronavirus outbreaks among
their animals. Almost as soon as this pandemic began, you
(02:14):
started hearing stories about COVID pets, about how the loneliness
of coronavirus created an opening of arms from humans to
dogs and cats, especially about how we weren't just using
animals to get us out of the pandemic, but how
we were using them to get through it. In this episode,
we're going to talk to an American living in Sweden
who opened her arms to a new puppy, and she'll
(02:35):
tell us how it didn't work out as planned, not
even close. This story might make some people mad, but
before you listen, I ask you to put yourself in
the shoes of our storyteller. If you can't and you're
so mad you have to shout at someone, send me
an angry tweet at Sean Revive from my Heart Radio
and School of Humans. I'm Sean Revive and this is
(02:57):
long shot. My name is Marina. I live in Gothenburg, Sweden,
which is the second largest and first best city in Sweden.
But as you can probably tell, I am American, not Swedish.
(03:22):
I should start off by telling you that Marina is
a friend. My wife and I once stayed with her
in Sweden over Christmas. We ate a ton of pickled fish,
and because I'm like ten years old, we joked a
lot about Swedish chef. Anyway, Marina has been living in
Sweden's twenty sixteen. She loves Sweden for a long time.
(03:46):
It was her dream to live there, and she's finally
doing it. The first case of COVID nineteen in Sweden
comes in January twenty twenty, and then there are no
more cases until late February, and there is no confirmed
community spread until March. But by April, the state epidemiologist
of Sweden says that he believes between five and ten
percent of Swedes are already carrying the virus. Marina works
(04:10):
for a big Swedish tech company and eventually stops going
to the office and starts working from home. Working from home,
my daily life was like waking up, like sometimes I
would get dressed, sometimes I'd just wear pajamas all day.
Sometimes I'd go take a walk, sometimes I wouldn't. Like
I was having a really hard time sticking to any
sort of schedule because the days were all the same
(04:33):
and there was nothing to do. For years, Marina thought
about getting a dog, and like a lot of people,
coronavirus and the loneliness that comes with it is the
turning point. I was just at my wits end, like
so sick of just being by myself. So I decided, like,
now is the time I'll get a dog. I can
be at home and train the dog. It seemed like
(04:55):
a good idea. She has a few reasons for wanting
a dog. One companionship, someone to be around the house with,
two giving her life some structured taking a dog and walks,
giving the dog food. It would give me something to
focus on that wasn't just me. Then also this idea
of you know, I've lived in Sweden five years and
(05:17):
it has been challenging to make friends here and have
a community. And I thought that by getting a dog,
I would be able to meet other dog owners and
like it would open up my life in the human
sense as well. But the problem is a lot of
people in Sweden and millions of people across the globe,
see the pandemic as a good reason to get a dog.
(05:39):
So it was impossible to get a dog for love
or money, Like, no matter how much you were willing
to pay, there were just like no dogs available. A
friend tells her that he got his dog via a
site called blockett. It's like a Swedish Craigslist. You can
buy and sell stuff on there. You can also find
a pet from individual owners. So that wasn't my first choice,
but I decided to go with it because it seemed
(06:02):
like the only way I could get a dog here.
So I had to message a bunch of people. Like
none of the dogs worked out. They were just like
being snapped up really quickly. There's a really hot dog market.
So finally, when I found this super cute little black
and white French bulldog puppy, I was so excited. I
messaged the woman, gave her my whole spiel, and it
(06:25):
was like interviewing for an apartment, Like I had to
sell her on choosing me as the dog owner. I
sort of leaned on being American because Swedish people kind
of like Americans by default, So I was like, I
live here and I live alone, and I just would
really love a dog. I think it would really help
me like integrate into Swedish society. Marina's sales pitch works
(06:50):
and she gets the dog. But the dog is two
hours away and she doesn't have a car or a
driver's license. So I asked a friend of mine, a
Swedish friend, to drive me there to pick up the dog.
So she agreed and we rented a car, went down there,
little road trip. She meets the dog in person. He's adorable.
(07:13):
He's a bit freaked out, obviously because a stranger is
taking him, but he seemed okay. He was fine in
the car, so he picked him up. I paid for him,
got all his dog paperwork, etc. It seemed fine, like
the woman seemed normal, and I took him home. Finally,
she has a dog, a companion during these shitty times.
(07:35):
But the shitty times aren't over. So Marina is home
in her apartment, no longer alone, but with her new puppy.
Before she even gets him, she does what she calls
a name storm, basically a brainstorming for a name with
ranking based on various criteria. She comes up with Roscoe. Yeah,
(07:58):
so he's a French bulldog, like really cute little pointy
bat ears black and white for a little black nose,
and these like little puppy paws that are a bit
like out of proportion with his body, so they felt
kind of like big for him. But he was quite
thin when I got him, so I was like trying
(08:20):
to fatten him up a little bit. But very sweet
with like the most quintessential like puppy eyes. You know,
he would look up at you and be like the cutest.
Marina quickly figures out that Roscoe might need more attention
than an average puppy. When she picked him up. The
owner told Marina that Roscoe was already housebroken. He is not,
(08:41):
so he immediately just started peeing everywhere and being a puppy.
And at first I thought like, oh, it's because he's
like freaked out. He's in this new environment. He's not
used to me like I thought it was just how
puppies were, not having hot a dog before. The next
few days are chaos day and night. All day and night,
(09:02):
Marina is on dog duty. He wouldn't sleep through the night.
He wanted to play all the time. He wanted to
chew on everything, like things that sound like so obvious
to experience dog owners. I was going through it for
the first time, both because of the lack of sleep
because of his weird hours, but also just like taking
him out to pee a hundred times a day, and
(09:23):
he was peeing way more than was normal, but I
just didn't realize it at first, but he was so
so cute and he started like bonding with me, and
we were getting along as well as can be given
just how much work he was. By the fourth day
with Roscoe, Marina is exhausted, abnormally exhausted, and at first
(09:47):
she thinks it's just a lack of sleep from taking
care of the new puppy at all hours. So by Wednesday,
I was feeling like really run down and just tired,
and I thought it was just because of this like
change in my life with the dog and not being
prepared to have a puppy. But that I get a
call from my friend Sarah, the one that I went
(10:08):
to pick him up with, and she said that she
had tested positive for COVID and that I had been exposed.
So I'm like, fuck, I'm gonna have to get a test.
She's able to get a test the next day at
a clinic down the street. But then I came home
and I'm like, now, what, Like I may or may
not have COVID, I have this dog. I still have
(10:30):
to take the dog outside. It's cruel to like not
take him on walks. So I spent that first day
just like furiously contacting doctors and like anyone that I
thought might have an answer to this, Like am I
allowed to go outside? Can I leave my apartment? And
if I can't, what the hell am I going to do?
(10:51):
You're probably thinking, Wait, isn't Sweden at this point world
famous for its lack of a lockdown for its nationwide
experiment in creating coronavirus herd immunity. That isn't exactly true.
It is true that through October twenty twenty, Sweden had
not imposed any strict laws for its citizens, while other
European countries are in full lockdown mode with legal implications
(11:14):
for those who break the rules. Swedes can still go
to bars and restaurants, and Swedish kids can go to school.
But as daily coronavirus cases start to explode from just
a few hundred in September to more than three thousand
a day in late October, Sweden's national Health agency recommends
stricter measures in harder hit regions, including Gothenburg. There's still
(11:36):
just recommendations, but on October twenty ninth, the day before
Marina finds out she's been exposed to coronavirus on her
road trip. Residents are asked to stop going in most
indoor places, and for those who actually test positive for
COVID nineteen there are special rules. But Marina for now
is just trying to get a jump on things in
case she tests positive. So I finally got the ok
(12:00):
from various powers that be that as long as I
stayed away from other humans and dogs, I could take
him outside. But he's a puppy. He doesn't understand this,
Like he wants to go sniff other dogs butts and
like go near other people. So I had to really
be careful to keep him on leash and just like
keep him away from people while I was waiting for
(12:24):
the test result, which she gets on October thirty first,
So happy Halloween to me. Turns out I did have COVID,
I still had a puppy, and now I had to
just be at home until I no longer had COVID,
you know however long that took. For two weeks, Marina
mostly stays inside her apartment with Roscoe. It's a third
(12:46):
floor walk up with one bedroom in a balcony pretty
big for one person, but still a Swedish apartment. I
would take him, you know, to do his business on
the balcony, take him on walks twice a day. But
it became like incredibly stressful because not only was I
feeling like increasingly more sick, but he still demanded all
(13:08):
this time and attention and energy. So I had a cough,
I had like aches and pains, some diarrhea, like it
felt kind of like a food poisoning plus of flu
at the same time. Type of a situation. Marina is
stuck at home and feels like total shit, and then
(13:28):
things get even worse when Roscoe gets sick too. So
in addition to his like weird like peeing all the time,
he started throwing up his food and had like some
weird poop and stuff. And I'm like, oh no, like
what do I do Because I can't take him to
the vet because I have COVID. She finds an app
(13:49):
that allows her to get a telemedicine appointment, but for dogs,
I was able to talk to a vet over the app,
and so I had several appointments that way, just asking
like is this normal puppy stuff? The vets tell her
they can't know exactly what's wrong with Roscoe without examining him.
But she can't get him examined because she has to
(14:10):
quarantine until she's not contagious. So then during this time,
like the two weeks that we were like cooped up
in my apartment, he woke up in the middle of
the night and started throwing up, and I'm like, crap,
it's three in the morning. I just like went to
bed not too long ago, like I'm exhausted. Now I
have to clean up dog barf. I'm cleaning up this
(14:31):
dog barf, and then it turns out there are worms
in it, and I was just like, just kill me now,
Like my dog has worms, like literal living worms, because
this is a thing that dogs can get. So luckily
I had some warm medication for him already, so I
gave him that. But that was like one of the
(14:51):
lowest moments where I was just like, my apartment is disgusting.
It's full of COVID. It's full of like dog pee,
it's full of like you know, puke with worms in it.
Like this is just so correct. So now Marina's got
COVID and her puppy is puking up worms, and she
can't really do much about it. Plus, she's starting to
(15:14):
question if Roscoe's previous owner lied to her. He hadn't
been trained at all, Like he didn't know how to
walk on a leash. She didn't know a lot of
basic dog stuff that he should know by being six
months old. So then I started thinking, like was he
just not taken care of? Like did someone mistreat him?
His temperament was very sweet, He just like didn't know
(15:35):
anything about how to be a dog. So for a
couple of weeks, Marina's sick and Roscoe's sick, but eventually
Marina starts feeling better, her fever goes away and her
cough becomes mild. Her doctor tells her she can stop quarantining.
That was like the big day for me because a
malt I could go out and do all the things
(15:56):
I needed to do. And the number one thing I
needed to do was take Roscoe to the vet to
see if there was something wrong with him or what
was up with his situation. The vet tells her that
Roscoe had been underfed by his previous owners, but he
seems relatively healthy otherwise. She isn't sure why he's peeing
so much, but she gives Marina some special food to
(16:18):
help with the puking. In Sweden, all dogs have an
ID chip that's like put into their little puppy bodies
to identify them if they get lost. It's true. All
Swedish dogs need to have a chip or a tattoo
marked with a unique ID number, and they have to
be registered in the Swedish Board of Agricultures Dog Register.
The register keeps a record of popular names for Swedish dogs.
(16:41):
Molly and Bella are the most common in twenty twenty.
Luda and Siga are close behind. So in addition to
the chip, Roscoe also has a little puppy passport and
it turns out his chip number doesn't match the number
in his passport. They're one digit off one digit And
I'm like, why is that? And she's like I don't know.
(17:04):
But her whole demeanor change and she was like, you
need to get this sordid asap because it is not
allowed for you to be in Sweden with a dog
that is improperly registered. She leaves the vet appointment wondering
how the hell she got into this mess. Maybe he
was smuggled in maybe that would explain all his health
(17:25):
issues that he had come from some like Eastern European
puppy mill, and I had bought him without knowing any
of this. So I went home and I'm like, I
really don't know what to do, Like I don't know
how do I resolve the situation, Like who do I
talk to to get my dog legal? With no idea
(17:48):
what to do next, she calls the police. A detective
tells her to bring the dog into the station. The
first day I was free to leave my apartment, I
went to the vet. The second day I was free
to leave my apartment, I went to the police station
downtown with my dog. The Swedish detective there doesn't know
what to do either, but he calls the Swedish Department
(18:10):
of Agriculture and they tell Marina to go home and
wait for their call. I come home, give Roscoe a
new toy because he's been such a champ about all
of these trips and he doesn't know what's happening, but
he's been like really cooperative as I like him. All
over town. That night, she gets a call from a
woman at the Department of Agriculture. She explains to Marina
(18:33):
that if the chip by D number doesn't match the
doggy passport number, then she has only two choices and
they both completely suck. Option one is you can do
a two month quarantine with a dog in which he
has to stay in your home, not be around any
(18:53):
other humans or animals, and we reserve the right to
like check up on you, and if you break the
rules of the quarantine, they're illegal consequences. So I'm like, Okay,
that seems really extreme. Two whole months of that, and
I live alone in an apartment, Like, it wouldn't be
easy in the best of situations. So, while already living
(19:17):
in quarantine or Sweden's relatively mild version of it, she's
told that one option for Roscoe is to do an
extreme two month quarantine with an unhousebroken, worm, puking, adorable puppy,
with no help from friends, family, or even a vent an.
Option two was that I could choose to put him down,
(19:39):
And I'm like, is there option three? Is there? Option zero? Like,
help me out here? Is there anything else we can do?
I explain the situation that I still am getting over COVID.
I'm an American, I don't have like anyone living here
to help me, it wouldn't be easy, and not to
mention taking two months off of work, and just like
(20:01):
the cruelty of not letting a puppy like be around
other or dogs. It just seemed like even if it
were possible, it would suck and it would like harm
his emotional development as a dog to do this. They
give Marina twenty four hours to make a decision quarantine
(20:22):
or put Roscoe down. So at first I was thinking, like,
there has to be another way, and so all of
my friends and sisters are like trying to dream up
like other alternatives, like maybe he can go stay in
a kennel, maybe there's a friend who can take him,
and I'm like no, they specifically said he's like not
(20:44):
allowed to leave my apartment. Marina is also living in
Sweden on a visa, so she's nervous about doing anything
that can get her kicked out of the country. So
I slept on it, I cried, I snuggled him. I
was like a mess. And then the next day I
woke up and I was I would just like start
(21:05):
crying at any moment, and poor Roscoe, like he knew
something was wrong, and he would come up to me
and like lick my hand and like try to comfort me,
and and I'm like, oh god, I'm like trying to decide,
like do I keep you alive or not? But he
has to make a decision. The twenty four hours go
by extremely fast, and then ultimately I realized, like I
(21:28):
am not healthy enough to do this, Like I am
still recovering from COVID, I am not well, and without
any help, I won't be able to do this. I'm
gonna get sicker. He's gonna get sicker. And the thing
that really kind of tipped the scales for me was
thinking of like just how cool it was to him
(21:50):
to keep him cooped up with me in the apartment
without access to the medical care that he needed, Like
he needed to go back to the vet for more tests,
and I wasn't going to be allowed to take him
even to the vet. So Marina makes any credibly difficult choice.
I called the vet again to make a second appointment,
(22:10):
and the second appointment was to have him put down.
The next day, she tries to give Roscoe the best
morning of his life. She gives him all his favorite treats,
takes him on a walk, gives him extra cuddles, all
the things he loves. I was really struggling to keep
my own emotions in check, and I didn't want that
(22:33):
to like worry him. So it was just really awful.
So I put him back in the carrier. Call another uber.
At the vet's office, everyone is really kind and empathetic.
So you go there, they check you in, They take
you to a special room that's sort of like a
private room where you can be with your dog, just
(22:55):
the two of you. Because it's Sweden and they love candles,
there was a lit candle in there, so it's almost
this life chapel feeling in a way. There's a high
table covered with a blanket. But Marina can't let Roscoe
out of her arms. Yet he liked it when I
would hold him, so I just had him in my
arms to the point that my arms started getting really sore,
(23:18):
but I refuse to put him down. But then the
nurse comes in and explains what's going to happen. First,
they'll give him a sedative to make him calm. Then
once it's taken effect, they'll give Roscoe a second injection
and that's the one that kills him. I put him
on the table and patted his fur and stroked behind
(23:41):
his ears as he got the first shot. Then he
started getting really sleepy, to the point that because of
the sedative, like he wasn't able to stand up on
his legs anymore. So he's just sort of like laying
there and I'm petting him, And then the veterinarian came
in and gave the second shot, and I remember just
(24:03):
like looking at him and like one moment he was
alive and then the next moment he wasn't, you know.
And it's hard to explain, but even though his body
was exactly the same outwardly, like you could just tell
he's not alive anymore. There's no pain for Roscoe in
his last moments, only for Marina. They leave her in
(24:27):
the room alone, and I just like cried like a maniac.
And I had a mask on at this point, so
like the inside of my mask was all snotty and
like tears everywhere, and it was very uncomfortable to just
cry that hard with a mask on. So that's another
kind of like COVID reality. It's like you can't even
(24:48):
properly cry, you can't ugly cry in the same way
because you're going to get snow all over your mask.
She stays in the room for about fifteen minutes, Then
she thanks the staff at the vet and then leaves
and walks all the way home. On that walk back,
I passed so many people with dogs and just knowing that, like,
(25:09):
well they have their dog, Like why can't I have
my dog. It was just so intense, like getting the dog,
falling in love with the dog, and then losing the
dog in such quick succession. My head was spinning and
my heart just hurt. Even though I feel like I
made the right call to put him down, it was
(25:30):
really really hard to do. Had it not been COVID,
if I would have been able to rely on more
help from friends or get him to a kennel or
you know, if there wasn't a pandemic, I might have
found a workaround. But I wasn't able to. She gets
(25:51):
home and the apartment is a mess. The apartment is
like a tornado hit it. It's full of like puppy
things everywhere, all sorts of puppy things that hadn't even
been opened or used. And I that first day just
like putting everything into trash bags and boxes and figuring
out what I can give away and basically like getting
(26:14):
my apartment back to how it was before I brought
him home the month before. But even now I still
have a bunch of puppy things in the closet that
I don't know what to do with. Roscoe went to
Doggie Heaven late in twenty twenty. I went through a
period of essentially grief, because when you lose someone you love,
(26:36):
even if it's a dog, like they're going to be
moments where you're sad. And I was emotionally and physically
exhausted afterwards and still kind of recovering. And then I
went through a period of what I had assumed was
like grief slash, just decompressing from this, but it kept
going on and on and on, and so finally, by
(26:59):
like early January, I knew something was wrong, and I
talked to my doctor again and I said that I
was worried. I was depressed because I wasn't sleeping, I
wasn't eating, I was tired, like it just didn't feel
it didn't feel like COVID, but it didn't feel normal.
So that's when I found out, after a series of
medical appointments, that not only did I have COVID, but
(27:23):
then I got what is called long COVID. If you
aren't familiar with how life destroying long COVID can be
for some people, we covered it two episodes ago. For me,
it was manifesting as a lot of like mental health
stuff and just exhaustion, fatigue, also weird things like I
started getting headaches which I never got before. I had
(27:46):
like weird body temperature regulation issues. I would feel cold
all the time. Looking back, even now, I don't know
how much of like my post COVID health problems were
tied to this long COVID thing versus just tied to
like emotional exhaustion slash pression from going through this like
(28:07):
really hard experience in such a concentrated time. I think
essentially it was so stressful and so much anxiety and
effort in such a concentrated period that it sort of
like shot my nervous system and it's taken me months
to get past it. I would not recommend to anyone
(28:28):
else to get COVID at all, but also to get
an unhousebroken puppy and COVID on the same day was
just sheer bad luck, you know. In getting Roscoe, Marina
was looking for companionship both dog and human while living
in a foreign country. She was also looking for structure
during a time when structure completely broke down because of
(28:50):
the pandemic. I think, like a lot of new pet owners,
she thought her pet would open up new world. In
a slightly different world, I would have gone all those
things I wanted, but in a COVID world, I didn't
get any of them. On the next episode of long Shot,
(29:11):
we'll hear about a new, lower cost vaccine being developed
for COVID nineteen one that could help poorer countries worldwide
get access. Long Shot is a production of School of
Humans and iHeartRadio. Today's episode was produced, written, and narrated
by me Sean Revive. A co producer is Gabby Watts.
(29:32):
Yay special thanks to Noah Brown and iHeartRadio, Amy shirt
Left and Cleo Contirapti. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crowley,
and Brandon Barr. Fact checking for this episode is by
Adam Shadoo. Long Shot was scored by Jason Shannon. The
score was mixed by Vic Stafford. Sound design and audio
mixed was by Harper Harris with Tune Welders. School of
(30:02):
Humans
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