‘Quarantine Dog’
Chris Offutt hails from the mountains of eastern Kentucky, which he describes as a pragmatic world where all animals have a purpose and the motto there is “humans in the house, animals out.” But many deeply held customs and ways of living have been set aside during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Offutt, an associate professor of English at the University of Mississippi, has shed his belief that dogs are meant to live outside and for the first time in his adult life, he has a little lapdog, Zimmy, a half-Australian cattle dog and half-Chihuahua.