It's nice to have Treu back at home

It's nice to have Treu back at home. It'd be nicer if the circumstances of his return would have been different.

He witnessed both falls, and in both cases he stood silent beside the falling bodies, as if falling on the ground was what his masters were supposed to do.

On the first one the old man was walking the dog as any other day, early in the morning, a cold, foggy January morning of two years ago. Just when they were crossing a rural road to enter an empty plot where the dog could run free, the man collapsed. This happened in a spot where the road is long and perfectly straight. There was no traffic, a fact only attributable to the early hour. The man tried to rise to his feet only to fall again. He had to crawl to reach the side of the road. Meanwhile the dog remained at his side, not a hint of anything uncommon happening visible in his acting.

On the second one, a few weeks ago, the old woman was watering the lawn at her house. The dog followed her around. The faucet was dripping. She was turning it on when she slipped in a pool of water. When she tried to rise she realized of the sharp pain in her ankle. The sprinkler sprayed water on her at intervals. She had to roll over her back to avoid this. The dog kept on with his doings, the episode lacking in significance. He might as well just have approached the old woman and licked her face.

After his fall the old man spent a long period of hospitals and therapy but in the end he recovered. There were ups and downs in his changing mood, none of which the dog ever had knowledge of. As for the old woman, she had to undergo urgent surgery on her injured ankle a few hours after her fall. It was soon discovered that patience is not her cup of tea. Her temporary condition as a disabled person is currently affecting her mood in a surprisingly negative way.

Meanwhile Treu dozes on his bed, oblivious to the chronological sequence of events and to the subtle challenges adults face when their routine is shattered, only watchful to have his bare necessities satisfied.