The Dog and the Numbers
By Jose Avila
On February 29, 2020, I sat at breakfast and talked to my wife about whether we should just finally jump at the opportunity to get a dog. The loud bustle of the Saturday brunch crowd around us made it difficult to hear each other. Someone in the kitchen dropped a couple of dishes, and I was pleasantly surprised that no one in the restaurant hooted “great job!” or slow-clapped sarcastically. Anytime we would go out for breakfast, our talks would inevitably gravitate towards the subject of dog ownership. But something always held us back from going through with it, until that Leap Day.
It’s surprising how quickly things can happen in life. Two hours after brunch I had a car full of dog toys, a dog training crate, and a shaky 10-week-old Golden Retriever. We named him Bento.
Bento – 12 weeks. Photos/Jose Avila.
About two weeks into having Bento home, the news started coming in about mandated closures to non-essential businesses in the state. This seemed like a sensible approach, one that rang in striking contrast to the cacophony of endless insults and falsehoods spewed from the highest levels of the federal government. Clearly, the business closures would affect the state negatively, but the cost of human loss surely outweighs any economic harm. Right?
At that time, there had been two COVID-19 deaths in Nevada and less than 100 in the United States.
Despite the increasingly grim numbers coming in daily, those first few weeks with Bento were fun and joyful. At the time, I was midway through my penultimate undergraduate semester at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Spring Break came around and classes paused for the week, but as it turned out I haven’t returned to campus since. Scratch that—I stopped by one early evening to return some library books. The campus looked eerie at sundown, a ghost town in flames.
I’ve never really enjoyed driving, and I don’t miss the commute to campus. I do miss finding a good quiet corner in Lied Library, though. I certainly don’t miss having final exams while the rodeo is in town. There’s something deeply unsettling about breathing in the aroma of two hundred well-fed horses before a Physics final at 8:00 am.
Shortly after the spring semester ended, I was informed by my employer that they would no longer be needing my services or those of most of my colleagues. The large-scale economic impacts had reached home. Although unsurprising, the effects of being laid off from work in the middle of the worst global crisis in decades was anything but reassuring. Admittedly, this brought up some resentment on my part, not towards anyone in particular, but rather towards the systems which allow exploitation without consequences.
Even with the restrictions, the numbers kept going up with no end in sight. Fifty thousand lives. No end in sight.
Through all of this, Bento grew into his baby fat and started to develop a unique personality, his life’s main focus apparently being the gathering and consuming of whatever food I might be having at that moment. His boundless play energy was something to behold for a puppy, and his intelligence impressed me to no end. It still does. Bento, just by being there, kept my attention from the dreary news of those days.
Like those of us who live in the real world where COVID-19 is not a liberal hoax, I tried to focus on the positive aspects of quarantine and plodded on, finishing my degree in December as scheduled. December 2020 also brought with it the first (and hopefully only) coronavirus holiday season. A usually joyous time was replaced by—you guessed it—more quarantine. Still, many of us braved through it, sacrificing family gatherings and entertainment for the benefit of our local and global communities.
This small sacrifice made it all the more difficult to see and accept the constant reports of anti-mask events and protests around the country. Folks who proudly stood against science received more and more media attention, to the point where following the news felt akin to waiting patiently for a gut punch. Seeing the clips of packed beaches, restaurants, and parties felt like a direct betrayal to our better natures. At the same time, we endured terrifying imagery from Black Lives Matter protests showing people of all ages (yes, children too) being brutalized by the very brutalization techniques they were voicing against.
Naturally, the numbers rose. Two hundred thousand.
Not long after, we were subjected to the frightening and infuriating images of fellow citizens storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, resulting in even more unnecessary loss of human life. And that was when disappointment crept into shame. It was the most dispiriting day as a United States citizen that I have ever experienced. I’m old enough to remember 9/11, but at the time I was much too young to understand its root causes and consequences. The January 6 terrorist attack on the Capitol felt simultaneously shocking and predictable, and it figures to have a bigger impact on the country than foreign terrorism ever could. Another gut punch.
And still the numbers went up. Three hundred and fifty thousand.
On January 7, as the seriousness of the situation became clear, I felt it imperative to take Bento for an extended walk, if anything just to get away from the endless talking heads on TV and online. The streets felt emptier than usual. The wind quieter and calmer than it had been the rest of that week. I felt the same way I did the day after the 2016 election: lost, confused, angry. You know those aerial photos of destroyed cities after an atom bomb has been dropped on them? That’s how the street felt. That’s how I felt.
It’s almost March now as I write this. A full year has come and gone, and the virus has dug in. Still very much a part of daily life. The anti-mask crowd is still here, too. So are those same citizens that attacked the Capitol. They’re all still here. There’s even some folks out there (looking at you, Q) who equate wearing a mask to being under the spell of some sort of Reptilian Democrat overlord. Nonsense, I know. If we get past this virus, it will be when a great majority of us recognize that empathy is not a weakness, just as ignorance and crassness are not virtues.
It’s impossible to quantify all the effects that coronavirus has wrought on us as individuals and as communities. But it may be possible to learn something from one year of global catastrophe. For me, it feels increasingly like being perpetually connected to the ebb and flow of human history, which is so often immeasurably beyond our control. It can be so easy to get lost in those depths. That’s usually when Bento nudges me with a big smile, just because.
Bento – 9 months.
Leap Day 2020, the day we finally decided to get Bento, was coincidentally the last time I left the house for anything other than necessities in over a year, my very small contribution to help contain the spread of the virus.
Just outside my neighborhood, a local gas station boasts a massive United States flag that casts a large shadow on the asphalt around it. The stars and stripes are clearly seen from several blocks around. Today, it flies at half-mast, marking five hundred thousand lost.
Jose Avila is a recent graduate of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in Mathematics. He enjoys reading, writing, films, and making music.
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