@woogie I'm sad to say that Toby died a couple of months ago, just days before our daughter and family came up to visit. The vet prescribed dog Prozac for Toby, and he stopped the howling. It was a hard time for her. She had gotten Toby while she was still living with us, and my Aussie/Border Collie loved him. Barnabas played so gently with the tiny ball of fur. We pretty much raised Toby his first year because our daughter worked the long graveyard shift. Then they moved to Seattle - supposedly to go to WU, but we knew it was because she wanted to be close to her boyfriend. Fortunately she figured out that he wasn't the person she would want to marry before it was too late.

One of the services my dogs have done is to protect my space. We didn't call it social distancing, but that's just what Sadie does, to help me with PTSD. People don't like it because they see it as "why is your dog in my way? Why isn't she better trained?" But in busy places I don't like to be crowded, and Sadie sits or lies down next to me. Any time I stop to look at something more than 15 or 20 seconds she goes down. Her service for depression is lying on my core, technically called deep tissue stimulation therapy.

I'm needing her services more than usual these days. Depression is creeping in with anxiety following close behind. It usually helps to be outside planting, watering, weeding, but not so much when my feet hurt as much as they are today. Our driveway is a quarter mile long and last year I worked long hours cutting back the bushy weeds that get 6' tall and encroach on the driveway and scratch the sides of the car. The trunks were so big that I had to use loppers that are intended to trim tree branches. So, this year I decided to spray them with Roundup. I walked it twice today for the second application. So, my feet are hurting even more than usual. And pain gets tied up with depression. Usually when I'm working outside, Sadie is never far away, but I had to keep the dogs in the house while I did the spraying, so I didn't have my canine therapist running around, hunting gophers and ground squirrels, running over to check on me. I'm not sure who is helping whom sometimes.
Jim