QuaranToni
Lindsay Boyle
before COVID-19 came into view in Connecticut, 2020 wasn’t treating me well. I got shingles. My car died. We put down our feisty pup, Kirby, at the age of 14. And then I got the flu.
An eternal optimist, I shrugged it off: 2020 can only get better from here, right? Wrong.
The bittersweet news is, being stuck at home made the loss of Kirby impossible to escape. With my workload pushed into overdrive by the new coronavirus, my wife began spending most of her free time scouring dog adoption websites.
And this is how Rigatoni, or “Toni,” became the newest member of our family. Like a slew of other people, my wife, Molly Yanity, turned to Petfinder.com. Per the New York Times, Petfinder saw a 122 percent jump in adoption inquiries between March 15 and April 15 compared to the previous four weeks.
Toni, under the wing of Monroebased Furry Friends Foster and Rescue, was among the first dogs she saw.
“He had this adorable little underbite and a sweet face,” Molly told me recently. “When I saw that he would be served better in a females-only house. I thought we might be perfect.”
Rigatoni was found last May roaming the woods of Avon, timid toward everyone but particularly terrified of men. He spent the next 11 months with a foster
who, though she loved him and taught him trust, had two other dogs — hence his listing for adoption. But COVID-19 was ramping up, and Toni the shy guy needed at least a couple of in-person visits, the folks at Furry Friends said. They had put things on pause until they could nail down some new best practices.
“I kept looking at other dogs and made inquiries on four others,” Molly said, “but all their processes were paused as well.”
Then Furry Friends got back in touch.
“They said they could do a virtual home visit and would check our references,” she said. “Then, if it panned out, we could do a socially distanced visit at our house.”
The virtual visit went smoothly — Molly said it felt similar to the FaceTime tour she gave her mom when we moved here last summer — and our references gave glowing recommendations.
Before I knew it, Toni the Chihuahua-min pin and his foster mom were standing in our fenced-in backyard, with Molly sitting near the basement door and me sitting just inside it.
As advertised, Toni was skittish. He’d saunter toward us, then scurry away. He didn’t want to be touched (though he
accept the treats we offered), and he wasn’t at all sold on entering our basement.
Little by little, that changed. Within half an hour, his foster was certain we were the ones. Emotional, she offered a bag full of Toni’s food and clothes and wished us well.
The first few hours were strange. He took to Molly first and snapped at me when I tried to leash him or pick him up. But soon we discovered he loves chasing sweat-shirted hands. And just look at how he helped me write this story… Still, adopting during “quaranWell
tine” presents special challenges. He’s not good at meeting others as it is, and right now getting him used to that is challenging because we aren’t socializing as we usually would.
Fortunately, where we live is full of fenced-in backyards. Toni has befriended the neighborhood kids. He’s not sure what to think of the two men building a deck to our left. He does like the two little poodles to our right (but I hope they can learn to tolerate one another).
As for what might happen when things return to “normal,” Molly isn’t too concerned.
“I think we’ll be able to wean him away from our full-time presence because things will reopen slowly,” she said. “He lived with (his foster) for 10 or so months and he transitioned to us so quickly. He’s in for a shock — life will be different— but dogs just adapt so easily.”