a time. Sure, some dogs love seeing the UPS driver, as evidenced by the very good boys and girls of the UPSDogs Instagram account. But that account is not representative of reality, says Ken Labbe, who has delivered mail in Illinois for the USPS for 28 years. Labbe loves dogs, and he doesn’t fault them for not loving him back. “They can be protective. They’re saying, look, I protect the homestead,” he says. But for Labbe’s safety—and your dog’s—it’s worth trying to make package deliveries a little less chaotic for everyone. Dogs are incredibly sensitive to noise, says Carol Osborne, DVM, an integrative veterinarian who runs the Chagrin Falls Veterinary Center and Pet Clinic in Ohio. “Thousands of dogs have noise phobias,” which may even include the doorbell or loud knocking, she explains. That means package deliveries are not just ruining your Zoom meetings, they’re also possibly causing your dog a lot of stress. “If your dog is constantly in that high alert, can't relax, can't turn their brain off state, that can be a really hard way to live their life,” says Liv Hagen, an animal behaviorist with Minnesota’s Animal Humane Society.