ROPEIK: Dog days

My dog has created an obstacle course. First she’s lying there when I open the door to the hallway, then she gets up to block me again when I try to go around. When I finally make it to the kitchen, cane in hand, she decides it’s time for breakfast, so she stands at her bowl, which just happens to be at the junction between me and the fridge. In the living room, she’s arranged her toys artfully across the floor in just such a way that I have to hop around to move forward five feet.

By the time I get back to the room I started in, she’s lying in front of the door again.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence. After all, Trudy’s not the smartest dog in the world. She barks at the doorbell when she’s standing outside with you while you ring it and also she doesn’t have opposable thumbs. But I’m pretty sure she’s more cunning than she lets on.

Trudy, who’s 77 in dog years, is sort of a herder and definitely a pack animal. She’s part collie and part husky. She’s only really content when the whole family &- that being her, my parents and me &- is together.

But it seems the family as she perceives it underwent some changes when I got home from the hospital after about a month of unscheduled absence. Though Trudy and I certainly had a joyful reunion, I also brought a few new faces with me: the cane, the crutches, the walker and the wheelchair.

My parents and I didn’t consider these things to be new additions to the family, but Trudy apparently had other ideas. We’re pretty sure she feels threatened by my new BFFs. Her main strategy, therefore, is to strategically stand in front of me at all times, asserting herself, letting the mobility aids know precisely who is the alpha dog around here.

The other explanation, of course, is that Trudy has devised and implemented a devastating petting-enforcement campaign. It’s pretty smart, to be honest &- she knows I can’t get around her if she stands in my way and that I’ll trip if I try to edge by. So I have to pay the toll. Once a reasonable amount of ear-scratching has transpired, she lets me by. As they said to the velociraptor in “Jurassic Park” &- clever girl.

But really, I’m not complaining. Probably my least favorite part of college is the lack of pets &- or more specifically dogs, because cats generally seem to be a popular Allston fashion accessory. Sometimes you just need an animal in your life. The high point of our beach week after high school graduation was finding a stray dog and hanging out with it for an evening, when that very afternoon we’d been grousing about how we’d be having more fun if only we had some pets around. (That dog was christened Sandy, because she was curly and awesome and matched my Little Orphan Annie persona, and we found her owners in the end.)

When I go off to school every semester, I’m able to say a proper goodbye to Trudy. I can give her a big hug and tell her that I’ll see her at Thanksgiving or spring break. I know she’s probably glad to see me go at first &- I spend my summers keeping her up until all hours in the office that she sleeps in &- but she’ll miss me soon enough, and she’s always panicked with excitement when I come home. And this summer when I was in the hospital, I didn’t even get to say goodbye to her.

They do pet therapy at the hospital on occasion, but I never managed to make it. I sighed over photos of good old Trudy that my mom sometimes texted me. I thought about trying to Skype with her, but decided it might be too much for her small brain to handle, and anyway it wouldn’t have been the same. In the end, when I went home in September, I was probably more panicked with excitement to see Trudy for the first time than she was to see me.

Ever since, she’s been the high point of my forced semester of homestay. I miss almost everything about college, Boston, apartment life &- but I don’t miss having to be parted from my darling dog. Now I sleep on the ground floor in the room that used to house my desk, which is where Trudy’s bed is too. We keep each other company. We have conversations. Maybe I’m going a little stir-crazy. I guess I don’t care.

So, Trudence Ropeik, Esq., all this is just to say thank you for being an unexpected upside to being stuck at home all semester. You may be hell-bent on sabotaging my recovery with your petting schemes and your obstacle courses, but I don’t really mind at all.