My bed is in a small hallway leading to the redwood landing of the porch. I barely have room to circle it before snuggling in. The last few weeks I’ve felt like an intruder in my own home. Bompa — Grandma Winters — moved in after Bompo, her husband of 55 years, died in the fire that destroyed their apartment building: Incense, autoeroticism — poor old guy.

Bompa and I got on fine. She even brought me gifts, until she took the nook-room, a jutting porch of rain-forest design, as her own. All timbers and bark and paper shades. It had been my room. My very own. She feels bad she took it from me and I guess being a bitch is her way of apologizing.

In truth, she had brought Bing, Jada, and myself into the household. We three, littermates, competed for her attention. Three others, forever nameless to us, were given to the Rachold’s, a family of actors who scored with a theater company in far off Kansas City. They packed up and moved in less than a week. Burt Rachold brought all the doggie stuff they didn’t want to pack — nice things like a bongo board, low wooden cribs, and a small, fairly loud grandfather clock for the nook room. But stupid things, too, like a box of plaid jackets from The Collie Clothiers. Bompa fastened me into a MacLachlan tartan made for a full-sized dog The velcro stays and fasteners ate at my soft underbelly. And why? Because Bompa had airs. She was a member of the MacLachlan clan, and parading me along Charter street in this ridiculous garb helped her grieve for the drowned Bing, and the traded away Jada. Bompa loved me, but not wisely. And in all honestly, I sulked and whined. I knew my place, and my place was number three.

Yesterday, I fought the tartan. It was brutal, Bompa gripped me in the crook of one pantalooned leg while she struggled over me. Her thin cloth coat made a tent. It was dark and she worked blind. She had the front belly-band hooked up to the middle belly-band. And as she tugged the strap in the keeper the flesh of my teat became trapped. I snapped. And snapped. And snapped. I might have drawn blood. She abandoned the whole enterprise, possibly in tears, and rushed out onto the porch. “You devil. You little unappreciative devil.” She clomped into the back yard and set to digging weeds out from beneath the bottle-brush. Then she let me stew in my behavior, not speaking a word the rest of the day.

This morning I went straight to the laundry room. I think I wanted a truce, but I was prepared for a chilly reception. A square of light fell on the rough cement walkway. I sighed and sniffed around the patch. It was warm, so I took to my haunches. Every few moments the light moved and I managed to squirm along with it. It would have made for a splendid morning. I was quietly studying a zigzag line of ants — marveling how like dogs they follow a trail of the pissy smell they produce (and they have no noses!) — and Bompa drops her basket of whites deliberately at my snout. The plop of wind makes me blink. I move away and paw a pair of argyle socks balled into my idea of a chew toy from under the dryer. My idea of a chew toy and Bompa’s is not the same. “Gitcher canines off my laundry you raggedy mutt!” Border Collie. I’m a Border Collie.

After all that, she just shuts her mouth and hums some symphonic thing she’s proud she knows, while hunching her elderly bones for effect — that I should respect her great age. Then she goes about her business, with much wheezing and snapping of the loose tissue in her mouth, as she fills the washer with Justin’s, Greg’s, and Professor Winters’ richly aromatic underpants. By now, the ants have scattered to cracks unknown, the basket blocks the window-light, and it’s time for me to wake Justin and whimper for some love. I slink up to his room and push the door open, which is always a test of strength and paw-traction because it means pushing against the friction of door, pants, skateboard, crutches, school books, and small, wet paper bags of garbage left on the carpet in the path of the door. But I bull my way in and wake him. He runs off for a quick piss and gargle, then returns and pulls me onto his lap for a snuggle. I lick the skin above the elastic on his sweats — which have never made it to the laundry room.

But still, something feels different. I wait while the toaster oven ticks away at his waffles. The bell dings, but he doesn’t give me one. Instead he puts out dry dog food — fine — but he forgets the water until I whimper. I go to the door expecting him to grab his skateboard and lead the way, but he’s digging through a pile of paper on the foyer table. About the time I think he’s forgotten me altogether, he opens the door, slaps his thigh, and waves me out in front of him. Highly unusual. He ushers me into his father’s bright, low, dark blue car and off we go. He allows me to sniff out of the window, which has been lowered by only an inch. Does he think I’m going to jump? This turns out to be a pertinent question.

After a long drive across Marysville, we arrive at an old brick office building. Justin reads my frown and says as comfortingly as I’ve ever heard him, “Look Tango, it’s a dog psychiatrist.” Dog psychiatrist bounces through my head, but means nothing. “It’s Bompa that’s fucked up, but… what can I say?” I don’t know, you could tell her a quicker route to happiness for all of us might be some crazyweed for her to chew on. She’s a perfectionist, but how satisfying can it be expressing perfectionism in folded handkerchiefs, perfectly balled up socks, and laundry bombs?

A man wearing brown pants tailored from some kind of shiny animal-hide steps into the the waiting room. I must admit it is filled with some wonderful toys — disks, balls, sticks, tuggie-treats, and a three-lobed rubber apparatus which feels wonderful in my mouth. “Ah, you are Tango? And Justin Winters?” Justin simply nods and turns to me as though the introductions are my job. “I’m Doctor Albert Kyle,” he says, shaking first my paw, then Justin’s hand. I like him. I make as pleasant a throat sound as possible without releasing the toy. “I see you’ve discovered the JawRobicizor. A lovely selection.” With that, he ushers the two of us into his office. He is a lanky man with a large triangular head. When he lowers himself onto a couch, his knees up high and out, he looks like a praying mantis. The effect heightened by the way he folds his hands beneath his pointy chin.

Finally, Justin speaks. “Who are all these guys?” The walls are filled with oil-painted dog portraits. With a lot of dogs, a flat picture just doesn’t register — not on TV, a poster, or even a billboard. But I’m a Border Collie — and I actually recognize a couple of these characters.

By way of self-promotion, Dr Kyle points to a thick-necked, droop-jowled truck of a dog. “This is Hugo. Jerry Blame’s mastiff. Jerry was the quarterback for the JackRabbits in ‘08, and Hugo was making himself unpopular with Rory Houston — the black running back.” He warmed to the tale, “You get a racist dog and you either got to euthanize him, or trade him downriver to Stunton, where they go for that sort of thing.” That word, euthanize, I recognize. Bompa said it yesterday.

The doctor continued. “Hugo’s mid-way through his therapy. Every now and then I hire that Vietnamese kid — he’s got very dark skin. Hugo’s gotten to where he can tolerate the boy fairly well. See, I got the boy handing the dog real bacon strips. Bacon’s great because it’s stiff enough to hold out without getting your fingers bit off. The kid’s a good worker, but pretty soon I’m going to have to find a darker boy to work with. Get him closer to a real African-American skin tone.”

Through all this, I’m sitting and chewing patiently, getting a JawRobic high from the workout. Finally, the doctor stands and motions Justin out of the room, then he directs me to the little cushion in the wicker therapy bed. I circle thrice and wait for what comes next.