When Tibby arrived on her first night with us, we let her out into the fenced backyard. On the steps, she paused for an instant, ears up, nose twitching, poised like an Olympic sprinter in the starting blocks. In the twilight, something caught her eye. Slowly, she stalked, like a panther, into the grass. Then she dashed, disappearing under the arborvitae. In a moment, Tibby emerged, triumphant, shaking a small rabbit between her jaws.

“So, that’s how it’s going to be,” Todd said, praising her. “Good girl, good girl.” Tibby leapt into his arms, trembling with pride of accomplishment. She licked his face. Todd turned to me and shrugged, his eyebrows going up, as if to say, “What can you do? That’s our girl.”

I went out to dispose of the rabbit, then scooped some kibble into a bowl and sat on the kitchen floor with Tibby, stroking her smooth black and white coat while she ate. “You’ve got bloodlust, Baby Girl.” Her speed, her agility, her fierceness, even her quiet crunching–everything about this little dog made me smile.

Trapped at home, isolated from friends and family, everyone, it seemed, was eager to adopt a dog during the COVID-19 pandemic. But Todd and I had lost two beloved dogs in recent years and weren’t yet ready to risk our hearts again. The loss had been too hard. When Mac died, we still had Jackson to console us. But once he was gone, I felt a heavy door slam shut in my chest. “Never again,” I insisted.

With the lockdown, imperceptibly, something shifted. Our empty yard became increasingly forlorn. The wide expanse of grass and the sturdy fence were wasted on us. But I knew in my heart that I’d chosen this house, this yard, at least in part, with some future dog in mind, even if I’d never acknowledged this to myself. With little else to do, we walked for hours each day. Up and down the neighboring blocks we trekked, then, along the nearby greenway where we followed the winding path of a shallow creek under a dense canopy of elm, oak and red maple. As the pandemic dragged on, I began to imagine taking a dog along with us.

When I broached the subject of a new dog with Todd, he, too, seemed ready to take a tentative step toward adoption. In time, my online search offered up dogs that looked like they might be a good fit for us. I knew from past experience that small dogs get snapped up quickly, so we’d have to act fast whenever we saw one we were interested in.

The pandemic, however, had made pet adoption even more competitive. We’d fill out lengthy applications, then arrange for multistage interviews on Zoom. We’d tidy the house and trim the lawn to show off our ideal accommodations. Todd and I spent hours and hours recounting our experience and talking up our love of rat terriers. They’re not for everyone. This breed is feisty and headstrong, prone to destruction if they get bored. They need a job and lots of entertainment. Both Mac and Jackson had been adopted and returned multiple times before we met them. But no one is better suited to a rejected rattie than Todd and me. Their antics–and even their misbehavior–just make us laugh.

Again and again, our efforts failed. We’d get fixated on a particular dog, imagining a life with Blaze or Rocket or Petey, only to lose out to some apparently more deserving family. Finally, after receiving yet another rejection email one afternoon, I snapped my laptop shut. “I give up,” I said. “I can’t keep doing this. It’s too disappointing.”

 I’d been especially enamored of Petey. Now I was mad. Maybe we weren’t ready for another dog. We’d learned from experience that life is easier without the responsibility and heartache. Maybe we were trying too hard to replace Mac and Jackson, I thought. Maybe we came off as too desperate and needy. What were we trying to ease anyway? Too much isolation? Too much togetherness? Sour grapes set in. “I don’t have time for this. Searching for a dog is like having a second job.”

Todd and I agreed to take a break from our search, but the next day, I got another email alert, a rat terrier called Bella was being fostered just a few hours away. With neither expectation nor hope, I said, “Let’s just try one more time.”

Bella’s picture showed a Platonic ideal of a small rat terrier, just a few months old, tricolor, with a black-and-white face mask, caramel cheeks and eyebrows. Unlike Mac and Jackson, whose ears tended to flop, hers were erect. They were enormous, spectacular even, three sizes too big for her slight frame. If the wind got hold of her, she might take flight.

Todd and I made the three-hour drive east to Fayetteville to retrieve Bella. When we arrived, her foster family practically threw her out the door at us. Along with a favorite toy and a dowdy sweater, they included her medication, they explained, for anxiety. I felt a tingle of concern on the back of my neck, but I put it out of my mind as I knelt in the grass to snap a first photo of Todd and his new dog. I knew from past experience that dogs in our house tolerate me, but they bond with Todd. Every dog is his dog. I should be jealous, I suppose, but the joy of seeing Todd and a dog together crowds out any enviousness. He beamed as he squeezed Bella in his arms and kissed her face.

On the ride home, while Bella nestled under a fleece blanket in a crate, we discussed the problem of her name. We knew at least three other dogs with the same name, so Bella wouldn’t do. Bella had been a temporary appellation anyway, given to her by her most recent foster parents. Her medical records revealed that she’d previously been called Terry. “Terry the Terrier, really?” Todd said. He shook his head. “No.”

Todd and I rarely agree on such things, so I considered it a good omen that we came together quickly around the name Tibby, taken from the cute younger brother in E.M. Forster's Howards End. His given name is Theobald, but his sisters call him, affectionately, Tibby.

For the first few days, we kept Tibby confined to the house and yard, taking care to ensure a safe, quiet decompression for her. From the guest bed where I worked, I texted Todd in the study, one photo after another, Tibby pressed to my side, stretched out on her back, demanding another belly rub. “Is this what anxiety looks like?” Todd sent back hearts and loudly crying face emojis. Anxiety? What were they talking about, we wondered.

Todd and I had never had a female dog before. I’m not sure what I expected when I examined her, but, as a gay man, my experience with girls of any species downtown is, well, limited. “Is that what it’s supposed to look like?” I asked, pointing to Tibby’s tiny pink coin purse. “Should we take her to the vet?”

Todd’s experience in this area is more expansive than mine. “No,” he laughed. “That’s what it’s supposed to look like.”

After a few days, we ventured out for a walk. That’s when we heard the eardrum-shattering cry of anxiety. With Tibby, it’s not so much a bark as it is a shrill, skull-piercing shriek, like she’s been gutted. Every person walking by on the sidewalk seemed to provoke her. Every baby in a stroller. Every passing dog. Hers was a high-pitched keening that put your teeth on edge. Add to this, she lunged, as though she’d like to tear the throat out of every passerby. Although most people had begun to drop their masks while walking outdoors, we all remained on edge, especially around strangers.  Pandemic walkers pulled their dogs and children close, taking several steps back, sometimes crossing to the other side of the street when they encountered Tibby. Her nervousness seemed to shout out the unease we were all feeling.

Nothing, it seemed, would consol her. Tucked safely in the house, Tibby was quiet, at ease, but outside, on the street, she was a terror. One day, I took her to the neighborhood park. There were few people around, so she was relatively calm. Up ahead I spotted two young girls, sisters, I guessed. As we neared, Tibby remained uncharacteristically quiet, so we continued on the path. “No barking, good girl,” I cooed. As we approached, the older girl stepped forward. “Can we pet your dog?”

I was wary, looking out for a parent or guardian. But there were no adults in sight. The girls were on their own. “Yes,” I said, “but she might bark,” I warned. I leaned down to press Tibby’s body between my hands, to reassure her. The girls knelt to stroke her behind her ears. Just then, Tibby backed up, threw her head back, and let out an ear-splitting wail. But the girls were undeterred. “What’s her name?” they shouted above Tibby’s cries.

“Her name’s Tibby!”

They both laughed. “Why’d you name your dog Titty?” the younger one asked.

“No, no,” I laughed. “Not Titty. Tibby. Her name’s Tibby.” Tibby shrieked again, then lunged at the girls. They backed away. “Sorry, sorry,” I said, as I pulled her leash tight. I looked about again for a parent, an adult, anyone who might have witnessed Tibby’s behavior. With a rising sense of dread, I quickened my step in the opposite direction, hoping to escape unnoticed. This dog is dangerous, I thought.

At home, I recounted Tibby’s aggression. Then I wrote an angry email to the adoption agency: At home with us, I explained, she’s calm and well behaved, but outside the house, she barks at and is aggressive toward everyone we meet, especially children and other dogs. When our friends brought their dog to visit, I recounted, Bella was so aggressive that they had to return home. I wrote, “We’re deeply concerned that she may harm someone or their pet. This is clearly not a new problem, but deeply ingrained. To say that Bella is ‘feisty’ does not begin to convey the depth of the problem. To say that she suffers from ‘anxiety’ does not communicate the seriousness of her aggression.”

The rescue agency was apologetic, urging us to return the dog immediately.

Now Todd and I had a decision to make. Did we want to give Tibby up? If we did, what would become of her? When I put the choice to Todd, he choked up. “We’re not going to be able to keep her, are we?”

“I don’t know. I don’t see how we can. I’m afraid she’s going to hurt someone.” Mid-pandemic, everyone seemed to be hurting, not only from COVID, but from the mental strain of it. It was easy to become gripped by yet another fear.

Maybe we could hire a trainer, Todd offered. Or he could train Tibby himself. Todd is widely acknowledged by all who know him as an animal/baby whisperer. Any small creature who enters his orbit is immediately caught under Todd’s spell, soothed and quieted.

If we couldn’t make Tibby into a good dog, we reasoned, then no one could. If we gave her up, her aggression might end badly. She might even be put down. Todd and I resolved to keep Tibby and to do whatever it took to help her adjust. I thought of Jackson, fizzing with anxiety. He’d been afraid of everything his whole-life long: thunder, lightning, fireworks, but also umbrellas, newspapers, folding laundry, and our neighbor’s cat, who made a habit of hiding in the yew outside the front door, just so she could leap out and scare him whenever Jackson stepped outside. He’d been a mess, nibbling tiny holes in all the sheets and blankets when he got upset. Even years after his death, our linen closet remained stacked with neatly folded Swiss cheese. Jackson had not been easy, but Todd and I had loved him through it. We could do the same with Tibby.

At first, Todd could not find the switch to silence Tibby’s tooth-loosening shrieks. Nevertheless, he persisted. He speculated that Tibby had not been socialized during her formative months during the pandemic. With this in mind, he took her to a nearby dog park every day. With so many dogs, Tibby couldn’t shriek at everyone. In a crowd, she was cowed into silence. A smart and observant mimic, she quickly learned from other dogs to imitate their play. Only sixteen pounds, Tibby should have confined herself to other dogs her own size, but the big dogs interested her much more. A confident alpha, Tibby would dash through the gate and launch herself toward a lumbering Great Dane. She never nipped or growled or bared her teeth. Her shrieking, it turned out, wasn’t aggression at all, it was exuberance. Tibby just wanted to play, to be chased. No other dog could match her speed. If play got too rough and tumble, then Tibby might let out a high-pitched yelp. When she did, the other dogs knew, somehow, to back off. All the while, Todd remained at her side to reassure her.

I’d always been the heavy with our previous two rat terriers. But this time, Todd took the lead as disciplinarian. He was patient and gentle with Baby Girl, but unrelenting. Highly sensitive to a raised voice or a harsh tone, Tibby responded eagerly to Todd’s constant praise and encouragement. Day by day, she improved. In time, she learned to pass someone on the sidewalk without shrieking, a baby in a stroller, even, occasionally, another dog.

Two years later, settled into life with Todd and me, Tibby has long made the back of the couch in the front window her favorite perch. Often, people walking by point and laugh. S-shaped, on her back, legs spread, like a spatchcocked chicken, Tibby is a sex worker in Amsterdam, displaying her wares, seducing everyone walking by to come in. “Very purse-forward,” Todd says.

Daily, Todd and I gaze upon our little pandemic dog, praising her beauty–her ears, her nose, her whiskers, her show-quality stance–and her goodness. Todd repeats what has become our refrain: “I’m so glad we didn’t give up on our Baby Girl.”

Now on the other side of COVID-19, with so much damage left in its wake, we hear in the news that shelters are overflowing because many pandemic dogs are being returned. They’re struggling to adjust, plagued by separation anxiety and behavioral problems. Having returned to the office, their humans no longer have the time or patience to care for them. In an editorial for Scientific American, Jessica Pierce and Marc Bekoff argue, “Perhaps the most serious welfare issue facing dogs right now relates to the role dogs have been asked to fill as emotional support staff. We have created a generation of dogs who are emotionally co-dependent, often on a single individual. . . . But there has been almost no research or moral conversation about the welfare implications of dogs as hired (though uncompensated) companions, especially as companions who are expected to witness and respond to charged human emotions such as loneliness, anxiety, fear and depression. Dogs are profoundly empathetic and are highly attuned to our emotions, and so it is likely that our neediness extracts a high price from the animals we like to think of as our best friends.”

Our neediness extracts a high price, indeed.

Recently, Todd walked in on me while I was blowing on Tibby’s belly. He stepped back from the door frame. “I don’t think other people have, uh, as, um intimate a relationship with their dogs.”

“That may be true,” I said, detaching my lips from Tibby. “But if it is, I feel sorry for them.” Then I returned to the business at hand.

Other times, Todd nuzzles Tibby’s face and asks, accusingly, “Why is her face wet?” Because I’ve been kissing her, of course. I can’t keep my mouth off her. Sometimes I even take Tibby with me to the office. There she snuggles in her bed, situated atop my desk under the window. As I work, I’m soothed by resting my hand on her while she basks in the slanting sunshine, her ears twitching as a squirrel scurries through the treetops outside. Tibby has become, literally, a desktop therapy dog.

“Do you think she likes all this attention?” Todd asks.

“Of course, she loves it,” I insist. But I know I’m asking too much. Indeed, while she seems happiest sandwiched between Todd and me, from time to time, when I’ve cuddled and nuzzled too much, Tibby gets up and goes into the other room to be alone. Sometimes, she just needs a break from me. A therapist once used the term “fear of engulfment” to explain why humans sometimes recoil from my chasm of neediness. Now I’ve heaped the same burden on our dog.

She’s not just Todd’s dog after all, it seems. Tibby is my dog too. Now, when I’m walking alone with her, I talk to Tibby. “Sugar?” I entreat. “Baby Girl?” She stops and turns to look back at me, as if to say, “What now? Can’t you see I’m busy? There are squirrels. So many squirrels.” “I loves her.” I coo. “I loves her.” Tibby returns to stalking squirrels.