Thank you for your comments. The detail was provided to anchor the study in the background of what was occurring at the time, but we agree it is not necessary to the reader to see in the main text. These details and Figure 1 have been moved to the Supplementary material.
However, currently, the paper seems too long, and it goes into too much detail about how the pandemic took place in the UK. This information would have been interesting if data on the mood, stress level, general mental health of the owners had also been collected in connection with the pandemic and the links with dog behaviour have been investigated. But the questionnaire only asked how long the dogs had been alone and what they were doing during this time. Therefore, the detailed description of the pandemic is unnecessary and could be moved to the Supplemental material, together with Figure 1.