Rediscovering Marco

A canine love story in the time of corona

When we moved into our new house seven years ago, we also adopted a second dog. Marco was a 75-pound rescue. The vet guessed he was about 18 months old. He was a border collie/lab mix and the gentlest dog I have ever met.

Marco and our other dog, Clover, instantly clicked. Clover was older and smaller with the body of a beagle and coloring of a border collie. They behaved like siblings, wrestling, playing tug-a-war and curling up near each other in exhaustion.

Thanks to a wireless fence, they were able to run and play outside all around the house. As Clover aged, she no longer need the collar that gave her a slight shock when she got too close to her boundaries. She hated the feeling and she had a torn ligament that limited her mobility.

Marco had always been a bit more stubborn. He escaped now and then, despite the “stubborn dog” setting, but he always came right back. He’d been so good this past year that we didn’t expect it when he bolted after some deer one day this fall, and we were shocked when Clover followed.

I searched our property and the neighborhood for two hours. Then I returned home to find a message on the answering machine from the vet. Marco was fine, but Clover had died instantly when she was hit by a car. Some kindly neighbors had taken Marco to the vet for identification and they brought him home to us.

Another kind neighbor brought Clover.

That’s the sad part of the story.

It gets better from here on thanks, in part, to the coronavirus. Yes, as devastating as the virus has been, some little bit of good — some measure of happiness — has come out of it.

When Clover died, the two older kids were in college and the two younger kids were busy with school and school activities. My husband worked full time 45 minutes away and my days were spent writing, running errands for us and for my mother-in-law and cleaning.

We couldn’t trust Marco with the wireless fence anymore and we didn’t want to lose him, so he was relegated to a run. It was a long run with good reach, but he was clearly not happy. He would bark and bark at the deer in our backyard, but they would continue eating 20 feet away, unbothered. They learned quickly that he couldn’t get them.

Marco grew less active. He spent more time on the sofa. He’d lost his puppy-like energy. He and Clover had always entertained each other. Marco missed both his freedom and his buddy. We cuddled him more than usual and that was good, but he wanted more and we were all too busy to notice.

Then the virus hit.

The virus brought the college kids home to take classes via Zoom. The living room became a classroom for the younger kids. My husband started working from an office in the basement. With nowhere to go and everyone sitting at desks, we all needed breaks. Something totally different. Something fun and exciting.

That something, we discovered, was Marco.

It started with rough-housing between assignments and classes. The kids, each in turn, would leave their work stations and seek him out. They would talk to him, play tug-of-war with him and alternate chasing him and being by him. My husband started taking Marco along after work when he retired to the garage, where he is building pieces of the tree house of all tree houses.

I had been walking alone and with friends for exercise before the virus hit, but after everyone closed in on the house, I found I needed the psychological relief of the outdoors more often. I located Marco’s old harness, hooked him up and started taking him for walks on our property and along our rural roads.

Sometimes, I would find a child waiting on the stoop when I returned, anxious to take Marco on another adventure. Other times, the kids joined me. More often, they took him for walks on their own, wanting more purpose to their outdoor time than a solitary stroll.

It’s been three weeks since our oldest came home from college and two weeks since serious social distancing began. The world is suffering from the virus and from the loneliness the necessary isolation has forced upon us. But for Marco, it has been a rebirth.

He is happy again.

Everybody should have a Marco