Maybe it’s just that I’m no longer confined to a dorm, but this semester I have noticed a dramatic increase in the number of dogs making their way around Charlottesville. As we enter the back half of the semester, the prolonged separation from my own dog manifests itself in a strong urge to pet said dogs.
Coming from a family consisting strictly of dog people, the hardest part about my transition to college was, by far, leaving behind my beloved black lab-golden retriever mix, Maggie, and my then-new puppy, Lily, a yellow lab-golden retriever mix. The yin-yang duality of having a black and a whitish dog, in retrospect, had its flaws in the frequent event of shedding, but I can’t imagine a better dog than the two of them.
In her prime — and even until the point when she could barely run — Maggie prided herself on literally chasing squirrels up trees. She was fearless and protective of her family in everything except the event of a thunderstorm, which would cause her to hide in the basement until well after the storm had passed. Lily, except for a similar ability to chase off wild animals, by contrast fears almost everything except thunderstorms and is in fact probably the only lab to have inherited a genetic fear of swimming.
At the definitive low point of this summer, we were forced to put the ailing 14-year-old Maggie to sleep after she stopped eating and moved only with great difficulty. Maggie slept in my room and came with me every time I drove my car, and I largely credit her as the good luck charm that helped the Cardinals to win the 2011 World Series. She had been a constant in my life since the day my granddad and I convinced the rest of the family to buy the little black dog with a white stripe on her chest around the time I was 5 years old. My relationship with Maggie grew from the early contentious days when she would steal the socks off my feet to the second half of her life when she was my closest companion.
Because of this and the continuation of HBO’s ongoing motif of pet euthanasia in “Boardwalk Empire,” the dogless nature of college was especially potent going into this semester.
Early on, however, there was a notable bright spot: Cody. Like all great experiences, my relationship with Cody started with a trip to Cane’s with some of my roommates. Afterward, as we pulled into the parking lot of our apartment on Wertland, we saw a little white dog wandering around the street with no owner in sight. Because of the risk of cars and the huge quantity of broken glass on the sidewalk, we decided to bite the bullet and temporarily adopt the dog, who we learned was named Cody from his collar.
There was a tense moment early on when we called the phone number on his collar and desperately hoped that no one would pick up. Fortunately, we were able to leave a message, giving us at least a small window to spend time with our new pet. As time went on, we began to fantasize about the possibility of Cody’s owner never returning our calls and started to plan for the event of long-term guardianship.
Cody, who was remarkably trusting toward complete strangers, spent his time rolling around to get pet on his stomach and, we like to think, having a blast. After a while, my older sister came over to take advantage our diligent dog-acquiring, then shortly after we received a call from Cody’s owner who had been trying to find him since discovering he escaped his invisible fence.
It was sad to see Cody taken away by his relieved owner, but the experience was a nice foretaste of my future dog ownership. When I eventually make it to the “real world” that I’ve always dreamed of, I plan on adopting a new black lab and naming it after one of the great dogs from fiction, like Laska from “Anna Karenina” or Daisy from “Gran Torino.” Until then, I will just have to content myself with staring enviously at passing dogs and perhaps stealing another Cody. It will be hard for any future pet to live up to an irreplaceable dog like Maggie, but I look forward to the chance.
Christian’s column runs biweekly Fridays. He can be reached at c.hecht@cavalierdaily.com
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