Since I hear the internet is especially fond of stories about overprivileged dogs and COVID-19, and since it’s Friday and the world is insane, here’s one of my own.

For ten months we’ve had a neurotic but otherwise wonderful goldendoodle puppy named Matteo. When the lockdown started, Matteo was already pretty shaggy, but as the quarantine wore on, the situation got increasingly dire…

…to the point that one out of every three bathroom breaks were requiring a shower afterward to, uh, finish the job. Despite—or maybe, depending on your psychoanalytic inclinations, because of—the stress of my wife’s day job, this situation became a bit of a fixation for her.

But good news! It turns out that Matteo’s groomer was still working, in a safe and socially distanced manner. We made an appointment. Yesterday I dropped him off for about three hours.

The photo on the left is the dog I left behind. The photo on the right is the dog I picked up. When I saw him, I said, “That’s not my dog.” The groomer assured me it was. (He was also wearing, inexplicably, a red-and-white striped tie, but I’m sparing him that indignity here.)

Nearly twenty-four hours later, we are still not 100% persuaded. So let me now appeal to the wisdom of crowds: Is that my dog?

cc @JonathanBlitzer @Alex_Lily