The hardest long distance relationship I’ve ever had was not with a man. It was not with my friends, or even with my family. It was, and still is, with my dog.
I don’t say this lightly; studying in Scotland while the rest of my family and friends live in Australia is difficult at the best of times. Attempting a long distance relationship between Australia and Scotland was an ambitious undertaking (hence the keyword attempt). But at least, they, unlike my pets, have the ability to answer my phone calls. To understand when I tell them that I leave a part of me with them whenever I travel, that I am not whole without the people I love, and by that logic, I can never be whole because everyone I love is scattered around the world.
My dog does not understand that. He doesn’t know what it means to miss someone, or why I am no longer there when he wakes up. And yet despite that, or maybe because of it, I miss him the most. Every time I call home, under the pretence of seeing my family, I beg my mum to turn the camera around to show me my beloved menagerie of pets; there’s Lulu, my retriever, who lacks the braincells to comprehend that I’m gone; my cats, Oscar and Nigel who might know I’m gone but don’t care as long as they have food; and there’s Frank, my black and white cocker spaniel who I tuck into my bed every night I’m home. Sometimes, if I’m lucky and my mum can figure out how to turn the camera around, I get a glimpse of the back of his head, and I can yell down the phone and pretend that him turning his head was because of my voice and not because someone opened the cheese drawer in the fridge. Inevitably, I have to go back to talking to my family because there’s only so long I can ask them to point the camera at the dog before they get suspicious, and I hang up missing Frank even more than before.
But I suspect I am not alone in this affliction. University seems to have made pets something of a shared obsession, whether they belong to friends or complete strangers unfortunate enough to walk along South Street with a particularly appealing dog. There is perhaps no quicker way to distract a university student than to introduce them to a dog.
A Long-Distance Relationship
To see whether this was simply a personal failing, I took to the streets to ask students about their pets back home. It turns out that, while the extent of attachment varies, the general sentiment is much the same.
“It’s not like I wake up in the morning thinking ‘where the hell are my pets’, but it feels more like home with them there,” one second-year student told me.
Others are a little more proactive about maintaining contact. “Well, every time I call my family, he’s the first one I ask to be put on the phone,” international student Emma explained. “I love him like he’s my son. That’s my baby.”
Even those closer to home struggle with being apart; Sara, from Manchester, says that “Whenever I FaceTime my parents, one of the first things I ask is to see the dog. Unfortunately, she doesn’t understand the concept of screens or FaceTime. So, as I longingly call her name, she just looks in the other direction”.
Upon further discussion, Emma also admitted that it was all the more upsetting because “He doesn’t understand it. What if he thinks I abandoned him?”
Upon hearing this statement, student Cameron told me that his dog understood the situation perfectly well. “My dog’s not stupid like that. I just tell her I’m gonna be gone for a wee bit and she understands.”
I am not so convinced.
Sorry, Can I Pet Your Dog?
Perhaps the strangest part about being a student who claims that missing her dog feels like missing a part of herself is just how willing I am to substitute him with someone else’s. Maybe it’s just that St Andrews provides plenty of opportunities; there are always a million dogs walking along South Street, and it is my mission to say hello to every one of them.
There is something quite lovely about the way dogs seem to dissolve the usual awkwardness of meeting someone new. You don’t need to know anyone’s name, their degree, or whether you’ve met them before. You simply have to establish that you, too, think their dog is lovely. For the owner, this might be an ordinary walk. For the student who has spent the last few months looking at photographs of their own dog, it is quite possibly the highlight of the afternoon.
I don’t think anyone is particularly surprised by this. Dogs have a rather unfair advantage over the rest of us: they can make friends without having to say anything, and somehow manage to be the most interesting person in any room.
More Than Just a Pretty Face
It would be easy to dismiss all of this as a collective inability to resist something fluffy. But I think there is a little more to it than that.
University is full of new places, new people, and new routines. You can be enjoying yourself one minute, and the next, find yourself missing the rooms you grew up in, and the people you grew up with. Pets are part of that. For me, it includes a dog who takes up considerably more than his fair share of the bed. For another student, it’s the familiar sound of their paws on the floor outside their bedroom door. For someone else, it’s the way they’re just as pleased to see you whether you’ve been gone for five minutes or five months. What links us together, all these different people with our different pets, is the comfort of being loved unconditionally. The ease of not having to explain yourself, because they won’t understand anyway, particularly when so much of university involves trying to work out who you are and where you fit.
And perhaps this is why we are so quick to stop strangers in the street to say hello to their dogs. For a moment, they offer a little piece of something familiar. Even if it isn’t your own pet, you can still borrow a bit of that feeling.
Until Next Time, Frank
I still haven’t worked out how to make the distance any easier. I have, however, become very good at finding excuses to call home. Sometimes I genuinely want to speak to my family; sometimes I just want to see whether Frank is awake, whether Lulu has gained sentience, or how many rats Nigel and Oscar have brought in this week.
I know that, when I eventually get home, Frank will probably be more interested in whatever is happening in the kitchen than in the fact that I have crossed half the world to see him. I’ll tuck him into bed anyway. And, when I leave again, I’ll probably ask my mum to turn the camera around.
After all, someone has to put in the work to maintain this long-distance relationship.
