Puke Worms

HIV came from primates, and lots of human diseases are spread by mosquitoes, like malaria, Zeka, dengae, Westnile, and yellow fever. Some vaccines are grown in chicken eggs or even passed through blended animal organs. In eighteen eighty five, the modern era of immunization was brought in when Louis Pasteur injected spinal cord material from rabbits into a nine year old

boy to protect him from getting rabies. Today, in the early stages of development, prospective vaccines are always tested on animals for safety, to make sure they won't kill or sicken the person who gets it, for immune response, to make sure the vaccine induces the right kind of antibodies and t cell responses from the body for dosage to see how much vaccine is needed to induce the right responses, and to tinker with the formula to see what kind

of ingredients will make the vaccine lasts longer and in general work better. Both the Maderna and Fiser vaccines were tested in mice and Rhesus macaques at various points, although because of the urgency of the pandemic, some of these animal trials were happening alongside the human trials. The Oxford astrasenticive vaccine is based on a virus found in chimpanzee poop, and another vaccine in the works was based on a

virus founded in guerrilla feces. Researchers in Belgium are using antibodies from llamas to create even more protection against coronavirus. Animals have also been affected by coronavirus. Cats and dogs have gotten the virus, so have gorillas and otters. Naughty

of the Tiger at the Bronxoo got it. In New South Wales, Australia, fifteen dogs on their way to a shelter were killed by authorities to protect humans from spreading COVID during the handoff and in Denmark, seventeen million minks were cold when two hundred farms found coronavirus outbreaks among

their animals. Almost as soon as this pandemic began, you started hearing stories about COVID pets, about how the loneliness of coronavirus created an opening of arms from humans to dogs and cats, especially about how we weren't just using animals to get us out of the pandemic, but how we were using them to get through it. In this episode, we're going to talk to an American living in Sweden who opened her arms to a new puppy, and she'll tell us how it didn't work out as planned, not

even close. This story might make some people mad, but before you listen, I ask you to put yourself in the shoes of our storyteller. If you can't and you're so mad you have to shout at someone, send me an angry tweet at Sean Revive from my Heart Radio and School of Humans. I'm Sean Revive and this is long shot. My name is Marina. I live in Gothenburg, Sweden, which is the second largest and first best city in Sweden. But as you can probably tell, I am American, not Swedish.

I should start off by telling you that Marina is a friend. My wife and I once stayed with her in Sweden over Christmas. We ate a ton of pickled fish, and because I'm like ten years old, we joked a lot about Swedish chef. Anyway, Marina has been living in Sweden's twenty sixteen. She loves Sweden for a long time. It was her dream to live there, and she's finally

doing it. The first case of COVID nineteen in Sweden comes in January twenty twenty, and then there are no more cases until late February, and there is no confirmed community spread until March. But by April, the state epidemiologist of Sweden says that he believes between five and ten percent of Swedes are already carrying the virus. Marina works for a big Swedish tech company and eventually stops going

to the office and starts working from home. Working from home, my daily life was like waking up, like sometimes I would get dressed, sometimes I'd just wear pajamas all day. Sometimes I'd go take a walk, sometimes I wouldn't. Like I was having a really hard time sticking to any sort of schedule because the days were all the same and there was nothing to do. For years, Marina thought about getting a dog, and like a lot of people, coronavirus and the loneliness that comes with it is the

turning point. I was just at my wits end, like so sick of just being by myself. So I decided, like, now is the time I'll get a dog. I can be at home and train the dog. It seemed like a good idea. She has a few reasons for wanting a dog. One companionship, someone to be around the house with, two giving her life some structured taking a dog and walks, giving the dog food. It would give me something to

focus on that wasn't just me. Then also this idea of you know, I've lived in Sweden five years and it has been challenging to make friends here and have a community. And I thought that by getting a dog, I would be able to meet other dog owners and like it would open up my life in the human sense as well. But the problem is a lot of people in Sweden and millions of people across the globe, see the pandemic as a good reason to get a dog.

So it was impossible to get a dog for love or money, Like, no matter how much you were willing to pay, there were just like no dogs available. A friend tells her that he got his dog via a site called blockett. It's like a Swedish Craigslist. You can buy and sell stuff on there. You can also find a pet from individual owners. So that wasn't my first choice, but I decided to go with it because it seemed like the only way I could get a dog here. So I had to message a bunch of people. Like

none of the dogs worked out. They were just like being snapped up really quickly. There's a really hot dog market. So finally, when I found this super cute little black and white French bulldog puppy, I was so excited. I messaged the woman, gave her my whole spiel, and it was like interviewing for an apartment, Like I had to

sell her on choosing me as the dog owner. I sort of leaned on being American because Swedish people kind of like Americans by default, So I was like, I live here and I live alone, and I just would really love a dog. I think it would really help me like integrate into Swedish society. Marina's sales pitch works and she gets the dog. But the dog is two hours away and she doesn't have a car or a driver's license. So I asked a friend of mine, a Swedish friend, to drive me there to pick up the dog.

So she agreed and we rented a car, went down there, little road trip. She meets the dog in person. He's adorable. He's a bit freaked out, obviously because a stranger is taking him, but he seemed okay. He was fine in the car, so he picked him up. I paid for him, got all his dog paperwork, etc. It seemed fine, like the woman seemed normal, and I took him home. Finally, she has a dog, a companion during these shitty times.

But the shitty times aren't over. So Marina is home in her apartment, no longer alone, but with her new puppy. Before she even gets him, she does what she calls a name storm, basically a brainstorming for a name with ranking based on various criteria. She comes up with Roscoe. Yeah, so he's a French bulldog, like really cute little pointy bat ears black and white for a little black nose, and these like little puppy paws that are a bit like out of proportion with his body, so they felt

kind of like big for him. But he was quite thin when I got him, so I was like trying to fatten him up a little bit. But very sweet with like the most quintessential like puppy eyes. You know, he would look up at you and be like the cutest. Marina quickly figures out that Roscoe might need more attention than an average puppy. When she picked him up. The owner told Marina that Roscoe was already housebroken. He is not, so he immediately just started peeing everywhere and being a puppy.

And at first I thought like, oh, it's because he's like freaked out. He's in this new environment. He's not used to me like I thought it was just how puppies were, not having hot a dog before. The next few days are chaos day and night. All day and night, Marina is on dog duty. He wouldn't sleep through the night. He wanted to play all the time. He wanted to chew on everything, like things that sound like so obvious

to experience dog owners. I was going through it for the first time, both because of the lack of sleep because of his weird hours, but also just like taking him out to pee a hundred times a day, and he was peeing way more than was normal, but I just didn't realize it at first, but he was so so cute and he started like bonding with me, and we were getting along as well as can be given

just how much work he was. By the fourth day with Roscoe, Marina is exhausted, abnormally exhausted, and at first she thinks it's just a lack of sleep from taking care of the new puppy at all hours. So by Wednesday, I was feeling like really run down and just tired, and I thought it was just because of this like change in my life with the dog and not being

prepared to have a puppy. But that I get a call from my friend Sarah, the one that I went to pick him up with, and she said that she had tested positive for COVID and that I had been exposed. So I'm like, fuck, I'm gonna have to get a test. She's able to get a test the next day at a clinic down the street. But then I came home and I'm like, now, what, Like I may or may not have COVID, I have this dog. I still have to take the dog outside. It's cruel to like not

take him on walks. So I spent that first day just like furiously contacting doctors and like anyone that I thought might have an answer to this, Like am I allowed to go outside? Can I leave my apartment? And if I can't, what the hell am I going to do? You're probably thinking, Wait, isn't Sweden at this point world famous for its lack of a lockdown for its nationwide experiment in creating coronavirus herd immunity. That isn't exactly true.

It is true that through October twenty twenty, Sweden had not imposed any strict laws for its citizens, while other European countries are in full lockdown mode with legal implications for those who break the rules. Swedes can still go to bars and restaurants, and Swedish kids can go to school. But as daily coronavirus cases start to explode from just a few hundred in September to more than three thousand a day in late October, Sweden's national Health agency recommends

stricter measures in harder hit regions, including Gothenburg. There's still just recommendations, but on October twenty ninth, the day before Marina finds out she's been exposed to coronavirus on her road trip. Residents are asked to stop going in most indoor places, and for those who actually test positive for COVID nineteen there are special rules. But Marina for now is just trying to get a jump on things in

case she tests positive. So I finally got the ok from various powers that be that as long as I stayed away from other humans and dogs, I could take him outside. But he's a puppy. He doesn't understand this, Like he wants to go sniff other dogs butts and like go near other people. So I had to really be careful to keep him on leash and just like keep him away from people while I was waiting for the test result, which she gets on October thirty first,

So happy Halloween to me. Turns out I did have COVID, I still had a puppy, and now I had to just be at home until I no longer had COVID, you know however long that took. For two weeks, Marina mostly stays inside her apartment with Roscoe. It's a third floor walk up with one bedroom in a balcony pretty big for one person, but still a Swedish apartment. I would take him, you know, to do his business on

the balcony, take him on walks twice a day. But it became like incredibly stressful because not only was I feeling like increasingly more sick, but he still demanded all this time and attention and energy. So I had a cough, I had like aches and pains, some diarrhea, like it felt kind of like a food poisoning plus of flu at the same time. Type of a situation. Marina is stuck at home and feels like total shit, and then

things get even worse when Roscoe gets sick too. So in addition to his like weird like peeing all the time, he started throwing up his food and had like some weird poop and stuff. And I'm like, oh no, like what do I do Because I can't take him to the vet because I have COVID. She finds an app that allows her to get a telemedicine appointment, but for dogs, I was able to talk to a vet over the app, and so I had several appointments that way, just asking

like is this normal puppy stuff? The vets tell her they can't know exactly what's wrong with Roscoe without examining him. But she can't get him examined because she has to quarantine until she's not contagious. So then during this time, like the two weeks that we were like cooped up in my apartment, he woke up in the middle of the night and started throwing up, and I'm like, crap, it's three in the morning. I just like went to bed not too long ago, like I'm exhausted. Now I

have to clean up dog barf. I'm cleaning up this dog barf, and then it turns out there are worms in it, and I was just like, just kill me now, Like my dog has worms, like literal living worms, because this is a thing that dogs can get. So luckily I had some warm medication for him already, so I gave him that. But that was like one of the lowest moments where I was just like, my apartment is disgusting.

It's full of COVID. It's full of like dog pee, it's full of like you know, puke with worms in it. Like this is just so correct. So now Marina's got COVID and her puppy is puking up worms, and she can't really do much about it. Plus, she's starting to question if Roscoe's previous owner lied to her. He hadn't been trained at all, Like he didn't know how to walk on a leash. She didn't know a lot of basic dog stuff that he should know by being six months old. So then I started thinking, like was he

just not taken care of? Like did someone mistreat him? His temperament was very sweet, He just like didn't know anything about how to be a dog. So for a couple of weeks, Marina's sick and Roscoe's sick, but eventually Marina starts feeling better, her fever goes away and her cough becomes mild. Her doctor tells her she can stop quarantining. That was like the big day for me because a malt I could go out and do all the things

I needed to do. And the number one thing I needed to do was take Roscoe to the vet to see if there was something wrong with him or what was up with his situation. The vet tells her that Roscoe had been underfed by his previous owners, but he seems relatively healthy otherwise. She isn't sure why he's peeing so much, but she gives Marina some special food to help with the puking. In Sweden, all dogs have an ID chip that's like put into their little puppy bodies

to identify them if they get lost. It's true. All Swedish dogs need to have a chip or a tattoo marked with a unique ID number, and they have to be registered in the Swedish Board of Agricultures Dog Register. The register keeps a record of popular names for Swedish dogs. Molly and Bella are the most common in twenty twenty. Luda and Siga are close behind. So in addition to the chip, Roscoe also has a little puppy passport and it turns out his chip number doesn't match the number

in his passport. They're one digit off one digit And I'm like, why is that? And she's like I don't know. But her whole demeanor change and she was like, you need to get this sordid asap because it is not allowed for you to be in Sweden with a dog that is improperly registered. She leaves the vet appointment wondering

how the hell she got into this mess. Maybe he was smuggled in maybe that would explain all his health issues that he had come from some like Eastern European puppy mill, and I had bought him without knowing any of this. So I went home and I'm like, I really don't know what to do, Like I don't know how do I resolve the situation, Like who do I talk to to get my dog legal? With no idea what to do next, she calls the police. A detective

tells her to bring the dog into the station. The first day I was free to leave my apartment, I went to the vet. The second day I was free to leave my apartment, I went to the police station downtown with my dog. The Swedish detective there doesn't know what to do either, but he calls the Swedish Department of Agriculture and they tell Marina to go home and

wait for their call. I come home, give Roscoe a new toy because he's been such a champ about all of these trips and he doesn't know what's happening, but he's been like really cooperative as I like him. All over town. That night, she gets a call from a woman at the Department of Agriculture. She explains to Marina that if the chip by D number doesn't match the doggy passport number, then she has only two choices and

they both completely suck. Option one is you can do a two month quarantine with a dog in which he has to stay in your home, not be around any other humans or animals, and we reserve the right to like check up on you, and if you break the rules of the quarantine, they're illegal consequences. So I'm like, Okay, that seems really extreme. Two whole months of that, and I live alone in an apartment, Like, it wouldn't be

easy in the best of situations. So, while already living in quarantine or Sweden's relatively mild version of it, she's told that one option for Roscoe is to do an extreme two month quarantine with an unhousebroken, worm, puking, adorable puppy, with no help from friends, family, or even a vent an. Option two was that I could choose to put him down, And I'm like, is there option three? Is there? Option zero? Like, help me out here? Is there anything else we can do?

I explain the situation that I still am getting over COVID. I'm an American, I don't have like anyone living here to help me, it wouldn't be easy, and not to mention taking two months off of work, and just like the cruelty of not letting a puppy like be around other or dogs. It just seemed like even if it were possible, it would suck and it would like harm his emotional development as a dog to do this. They give Marina twenty four hours to make a decision quarantine

or put Roscoe down. So at first I was thinking, like, there has to be another way, and so all of my friends and sisters are like trying to dream up like other alternatives, like maybe he can go stay in a kennel, maybe there's a friend who can take him, and I'm like no, they specifically said he's like not allowed to leave my apartment. Marina is also living in Sweden on a visa, so she's nervous about doing anything that can get her kicked out of the country. So

I slept on it, I cried, I snuggled him. I was like a mess. And then the next day I woke up and I was I would just like start crying at any moment, and poor Roscoe, like he knew something was wrong, and he would come up to me and like lick my hand and like try to comfort me, and and I'm like, oh god, I'm like trying to decide, like do I keep you alive or not? But he

has to make a decision. The twenty four hours go by extremely fast, and then ultimately I realized, like I am not healthy enough to do this, Like I am still recovering from COVID, I am not well, and without any help, I won't be able to do this. I'm

gonna get sicker. He's gonna get sicker. And the thing that really kind of tipped the scales for me was thinking of like just how cool it was to him to keep him cooped up with me in the apartment without access to the medical care that he needed, Like he needed to go back to the vet for more tests, and I wasn't going to be allowed to take him even to the vet. So Marina makes any credibly difficult choice.

I called the vet again to make a second appointment, and the second appointment was to have him put down. The next day, she tries to give Roscoe the best morning of his life. She gives him all his favorite treats, takes him on a walk, gives him extra cuddles, all the things he loves. I was really struggling to keep my own emotions in check, and I didn't want that to like worry him. So it was just really awful. So I put him back in the carrier. Call another uber.

At the vet's office, everyone is really kind and empathetic. So you go there, they check you in, They take you to a special room that's sort of like a private room where you can be with your dog, just the two of you. Because it's Sweden and they love candles, there was a lit candle in there, so it's almost this life chapel feeling in a way. There's a high table covered with a blanket. But Marina can't let Roscoe

out of her arms. Yet he liked it when I would hold him, so I just had him in my arms to the point that my arms started getting really sore, but I refuse to put him down. But then the nurse comes in and explains what's going to happen. First, they'll give him a sedative to make him calm. Then once it's taken effect, they'll give Roscoe a second injection and that's the one that kills him. I put him on the table and patted his fur and stroked behind

his ears as he got the first shot. Then he started getting really sleepy, to the point that because of the sedative, like he wasn't able to stand up on his legs anymore. So he's just sort of like laying there and I'm petting him, And then the veterinarian came in and gave the second shot, and I remember just like looking at him and like one moment he was alive and then the next moment he wasn't, you know.

And it's hard to explain, but even though his body was exactly the same outwardly, like you could just tell he's not alive anymore. There's no pain for Roscoe in his last moments, only for Marina. They leave her in the room alone, and I just like cried like a maniac. And I had a mask on at this point, so like the inside of my mask was all snotty and like tears everywhere, and it was very uncomfortable to just cry that hard with a mask on. So that's another

kind of like COVID reality. It's like you can't even properly cry, you can't ugly cry in the same way because you're going to get snow all over your mask. She stays in the room for about fifteen minutes, Then she thanks the staff at the vet and then leaves and walks all the way home. On that walk back, I passed so many people with dogs and just knowing that, like, well they have their dog, Like why can't I have

my dog. It was just so intense, like getting the dog, falling in love with the dog, and then losing the dog in such quick succession. My head was spinning and my heart just hurt. Even though I feel like I made the right call to put him down, it was really really hard to do. Had it not been COVID, if I would have been able to rely on more help from friends or get him to a kennel or you know, if there wasn't a pandemic, I might have found a workaround. But I wasn't able to. She gets

home and the apartment is a mess. The apartment is like a tornado hit it. It's full of like puppy things everywhere, all sorts of puppy things that hadn't even been opened or used. And I that first day just like putting everything into trash bags and boxes and figuring out what I can give away and basically like getting my apartment back to how it was before I brought him home the month before. But even now I still have a bunch of puppy things in the closet that

I don't know what to do with. Roscoe went to Doggie Heaven late in twenty twenty. I went through a period of essentially grief, because when you lose someone you love, even if it's a dog, like they're going to be moments where you're sad. And I was emotionally and physically

exhausted afterwards and still kind of recovering. And then I went through a period of what I had assumed was like grief slash, just decompressing from this, but it kept going on and on and on, and so finally, by like early January, I knew something was wrong, and I talked to my doctor again and I said that I was worried. I was depressed because I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't eating, I was tired, like it just didn't feel it didn't feel like COVID, but it didn't feel normal.

So that's when I found out, after a series of medical appointments, that not only did I have COVID, but then I got what is called long COVID. If you aren't familiar with how life destroying long COVID can be for some people, we covered it two episodes ago. For me, it was manifesting as a lot of like mental health stuff and just exhaustion, fatigue, also weird things like I started getting headaches which I never got before. I had like weird body temperature regulation issues. I would feel cold

all the time. Looking back, even now, I don't know how much of like my post COVID health problems were tied to this long COVID thing versus just tied to like emotional exhaustion slash pression from going through this like really hard experience in such a concentrated time. I think essentially it was so stressful and so much anxiety and effort in such a concentrated period that it sort of like shot my nervous system and it's taken me months

to get past it. I would not recommend to anyone else to get COVID at all, but also to get an unhousebroken puppy and COVID on the same day was just sheer bad luck, you know. In getting Roscoe, Marina was looking for companionship both dog and human while living in a foreign country. She was also looking for structure during a time when structure completely broke down because of the pandemic. I think, like a lot of new pet owners,

she thought her pet would open up new world. In a slightly different world, I would have gone all those things I wanted, but in a COVID world, I didn't get any of them. On the next episode of long Shot, we'll hear about a new, lower cost vaccine being developed for COVID nineteen one that could help poorer countries worldwide get access. Long Shot is a production of School of Humans and iHeartRadio. Today's episode was produced, written, and narrated

by me Sean Revive. A co producer is Gabby Watts. Yay special thanks to Noah Brown and iHeartRadio, Amy shirt Left and Cleo Contirapti. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crowley, and Brandon Barr. Fact checking for this episode is by Adam Shadoo. Long Shot was scored by Jason Shannon. The score was mixed by Vic Stafford. Sound design and audio mixed was by Harper Harris with Tune Welders. School of Humans