SILVER LININGS: AUSTRALIA’S DOGS AND CATS ARE LIVING THEIR BEST LIVES

Since the coronavirus hit, Cappuccino’s life has become, literally, a walk in the park.

Only two weeks ago, the nine-year-old spoodle was a dog often on the verge – barking at anything that moves, tearing up the house, and exploding into cries every time his owner would leave the house for work. But that all changed when his owner, Christina Caddy-Gold, began to do her job partly from home, last week, as a result of the spreading virus.

“When someone’s not home the whole day, he gets separation anxiety, so he’s always calmer when people are around,” says Caddy-Gold, manager of a social work department at a Sydney non-profit organisation. “He’s great, he just chills out, he’s very happy.”

It is perhaps the silver lining we didn’t see coming: that with the increasing numbers of people practising self-isolation and social distancing from other humans, pets around the world – which, according to the latest evidence, cannot spread the virus – are now living their best lives.

Instagram has exploded with countless pictures of fluffy shihtzus, kind-eyed pitbulls and sleepy Burmese cats luxuriating in beds and on rugs under the cradling arms and loving gazes of their owners.

Photos are posted alongside captions such as, “Daddy stays lots at home now cuz of this and I fink dis works for me”, and the hasthtags #livingmybestlife and #spoileddog.

Among the posters are Lady Gaga, pictured in self-quarantine on a couch with her four French bulldogs (“I’m hanging with my dogs”), Taylor Swift, who venerated her Scottish fold cat for hunkering down in bed (“Be like Meredith”), and actress Kristen Bell (shown nuzzling her senior rescue dog, Barb).

Melbourne woman Nicole Goldhammer isn’t exactly lavishing the same type of adoration on her dog, Goldie, an eight-month-old groodle.

“We’ve got all these beautiful wooden architraves around the house, and she’s just chewed through them all,” says Goldhammer. “It’s going to cost a bomb [to fix].”

Even still, Goldie’s happiness, too, has spiked ever since Goldhammer’s children, Max, 14, and Romy, 12, have been able to spend more time with her, now that their after-school activities have been cancelled.

“Yeah, look, my kids are obsessed by the dog, like, oh my God, obsessed,” says Goldhammer, noting that the family’s pets – there’s also seven-year-old cavoodle Ruby – are now, more than ever, top of the heap at home.

With all this increased animal and human bonding, can pets receive too much affection?

“No,” says Gemma Dunham, shelter operations manager of Second Chance Animal Rescue in Melbourne, noting a boom in requests over the last week with people inquiring about fostering dogs.

“But it’s really important with any animal that we encourage and teach social independence,” she adds, saying that giving pets fun activities to do away from their owners – like playing with a chew toy – will help them cope with disruption to their schedule, which can be distressing for them.

“This is so that they can experience being away from you, [and learning] that nothing bad happens when you’re gone,” says Dunham. “In fact really good things happen when you’re gone.”

It’s a lesson that humans might have to learn, too, once this intense period of pet bonding passes.

As Girls creator and actress Lena Dunham posted on Instagram on Thursday, alongside a cartoon of a woman and her dog staring intently into each other’s eyes, “I’ve had many conversations just like this with Ingrid,” she originally wrote, referring to her Mexican hairless pug. “We’ve discussed some deep truths and told some hard secrets.”