Sometimes Distraction is as Good As Relief. (Placeholder)

Science assures us that pets reduce stress. Fine. We’ve all seen the studies: lower blood pressure, slower pulse, oxytocin giving our brains a warm bath.

But sometimes pets don’t reduce stress so much as replace it with a more urgent variety.

On the way to our first walk of the morning, our Wire Fox Terrier, Farrah, currently suffering a gastrointestinal rebellion, chose 5:30 AM to unleash a coffee-brown Niagara onto the carpet directly in front of a neighbor’s door.

As I stood there in the hallway of our condominium building, leash in hand, a wonderful thing

happened.

There was no more Orange Menace turning the Oval Office into eBay. No more sluggish real estate market. No more government shutdown theater.

All macro-anxieties dissolved in the presence of a micro-crisis. When you are staring at a mephitic lake of canine ordure two and a half hours before the cleaning staff comes on duty[1], your mind becomes beautifully, ruthlessly focused.

The mechanics of remediation are not especially literary. It was handled. Farrah is improving. The hallway will recover.

Which brings us back to the question: what’s good about having a pet?

Sometimes it’s companionship. Sometimes it’s unconditional affection. And sometimes it’s the gift of a problem so immediate and so undeniably real that it evicts all the abstract ones.

A metaphorical pile of trouble is exhausting. A literal one demands action.

And action, before dawn with paper towels and disinfectant, is oddly clarifying.

[1] I love condo living. When an issue arises, you call the concierge and say, "please have this dealt with." But at 5:30 AM, only I am on call.