I’m sitting here in Hawaii and all I can think about is my dog.
For the next nine weeks, I’ll be living in a hotel on Waikiki doing a yoga teacher training course. Granted, it’s Hawaii, so there’s nothing to complain about, but it is a long time to be away from home. It’s also a long time to be away from friends and family – only I don’t miss them quite yet. I miss my dog.
I don’t know what that says about me, exactly. I guess it says I’m 37 years old and have no husband or children and my only real family is this big black dog with emotional problems that had to be put on antidepressants after he killed the neighbor’s cat.
While my fellow students talk about their boyfriends or show me pictures of their children, I’m talking about how Sebastian is so finicky he will only eat his food with a raw egg on it or how he wouldn’t look at me when I tried to say goodbye to him at the airport. He just turned his black snout to one side, and then to the other, when I tried to make him look in my direction.
I start telling stories about the time he tried to attack a porcupine in Steamboat and came in looking like a creature from outer space with quills over his face, bleeding and foaming at the mouth while my mom screamed, “Not on my rug! Anywhere but the rug,” at the top of her lungs. We took him to the vet, where he was sedated and promptly tried to kill the cat, his beady little eyes spinning in his head.
“Wow, I guess he needs a bigger dose,” the vet said.
While most women I meet want to tell me about their honeymoon or how they met their husbands, I have loads of stories about Sebastian. Like the time we lost him on a mountain bike ride and I wandered the streets of Steamboat Springs with tears in my eyes, posting pictures of my beloved pooch all over town and asking everyone with a pulse if they had seen him.
“Have you seen a black lab mix around here by any chance? About 90 pounds?” I’d ask.
“I see a dog that looks like that about every 30 seconds,” one local replied.
I spent the next 24 hours with a knot in my throat, until we finally found him the following afternoon hiding behind a bush on top of Emerald Mountain, where he had been waiting for us all night long.
When I lie in bed at night, I’m not thinking of my kid’s first steps, or the smell of my husband’s sweat, but of Sebastian bounding through fields of wildflowers, or the way he saunters through the snow, diving into the powdery surface head first like a porpoise. I think about our long runs down the Rio Grande Trail, his floppy ears bouncing as he trots beside me. I see him out of the corner of my eye sometimes, his black form resting peacefully in the corner. I can hear him sigh or listen to the thump of his body as he clumsily plops on the floor beside me.
In some ways, I am worse off than these women. At least they can call their kids or send their husbands e-mails. But the best I can do is have my friend put me on the speakerphone so Sebastian can hear me.
“His ears are twitching,” my friend said as I cooed senseless puppy phrases like, “Who’s the best dog in the whole wide world? Sebastian is!”
I get reports about the hikes he goes on while I am away, or the play dates he has with Charlie, a hyperactive golden retriever who belongs to my friend Maureen. I’m sick enough to keep his photo next to my bed.
In some ways I feel lucky that my dog is all I miss. I see these other women really suffering without their significant others and I realize that’s exactly why the only creature I depend on has four legs and a sharp set of teeth. It’s what allows me to have the lifestyle I do, to be able to pick up and take off for nine weeks to invest in my own health and well-being, to devote time to my body, fitness and mind – not to mention have an excuse to live in Hawaii, at least for now.
Freelance columnist Alison Berkley can be reached at alison@berkleymedia.com.
