Out and About with Amanda Shapiro and Fio

[gentle music]

My name is Amanda Shapiro.

I'm the editor of Healthyish at Bon Appetit,

and this is my dog Fio.

If I had to describe Fio in three words,

I would say he's curious, loyal, and hungry.

We're both pretty lazy on the weekends, especially.

He'll jump up on the bed and kind of lie around

and get belly rubs and just take our time getting moving.

But once we're up,

he's really ready to go for a walk right away

and usually I am too.

COVID-19 was so hard on everyone, myself included.

And one thing that really got to me was living alone

and feeling like I was really isolated.

So many of us were going through that experience,

but having an animal,

it was just so life changing to have this living,

breathing friend with me 24 hours a day.

My days can be really stressful

and especially working from home,

it can be hard to separate work time and then not-work time.

And having Fio around is great because, you know,

he'll start pacing around the time

that he knows it's time to go out for a W-A-L-K.

So I kind of get a sense of like,

okay, it's time to close the laptop,

put the leash on and get outside

and actually disconnect from work,

which is really, really helpful.

Brooklyn has been changed a lot because of COVID-19.

I would say a lot of places closed

and have only slowly started to reopen.

Restaurants are very important to me because of my work

and I really try to support local restaurants.

And so I did spend a lot of time making sure

I was still going to places for takeout

and checking in on the neighborhood as much as I could.

As places have started to reopen,

it's been really exciting to see the neighborhood

kind of coming back to life.

Fio is definitely a people-person dog.

He'll walk for miles if I let him.

We'll take really long walks, sometimes to the park.

Sometimes to see friends.

I can't even express how much I love Fio.

I never thought I could love a dog this much.