I have doubts about my dog’s truthfulness. Or should I say his sincerity? Or maybe both.

Rudy (he’s named after the diminutive, underdog Notre Dame football player) has been partially paralyzed for about a half dozen years.

Or so he claims.

We took him in, off the streets of Hollywood, where he was doing who knows what with who knows whom for who knows how long. Anyway, about seven years ago, a co-worker of my wife found him and brought him up to their office, knowing that my wife would adopt a cockroach if it looked at her the right way. As soon as I could say, “Let’s think about this, honey,” Rudy was in our home, mainly our kitchen and bedroom — between us, literally and symbolically. My wife couldn’t have been happier, and judging from his obvious grin, neither could Rudy. (Speaking of his grin, there’s something unnatural about the whiteness of his teeth; did he belong to a dentist before this?)

Anyway, when we first got him, this 11-pound rat terrier showed no signs of so much as a limp. He was flying around the house, on and off the bed, tormenting our 90-pound golden retriever, Sunshine, and, of course, me. Then, one day, Rudy took a tumble and landed on his back. Although he fell from a height of no more than about six inches, he immediately went limp (and seemed to be looking around for the nearest personal injury attorney). Doctors said it seemed obvious that he suffered some sort of injury before we adopted him and the short fall precipitated an inevitable long-term injury that was waiting to happen. In any case, two surgeries (and two sizeable Care Credit loans) later, doctors said that although his spine was not severed, it was likely he would be essentially paraplegic from then on. (I won’t even get into the fact that he’s diabetic and, as the vets like to say, “a Cushinoid,” meaning he has Cushing’s Disease.)

Naturally we all felt horribly about this and made Rudy an even larger focus of our lives (and me an even smaller focus of my wife’s). That’s when we began to hear a sound (is it even a word?) that would come to resonate almost constantly in our ears whenever anyone — particularly strangers and particularly attractive female strangers — would come across Rudy walking bravely in his custom wheelchair. The word goes something like “Aaaaaawwwwmmm?” I end it with a question mark because of the unmistakable sing-song quality of the utterance, which ends in a forlorn, high-pitched crescendo. Upon hearing this sympathetic sound, our otherwise independent terrier adopts the most pathetic look on his face and raises his mournful eyes upward toward the former, or future, beauty queen who uttered it, and prepares for the inevitable love-fest about to be showered upon him.

Let me just say here that I am not a suspicious person. I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and that the Red Sox are not playing this badly simply to get their new manager fired. But there are certain things I’ve come to notice about Rudy that have made me, shall we say, dubious. First and most obvious are his apparently random episodes of walking without the aid of his titanium cart, or wheelchair. We take him out of the contraption at home, where he usually drags himself on his butt to get around. But sometimes — maybe once a month — he’ll suddenly stand on all fours and walk, albeit wobblingly, across the rug or even the front lawn.

Next, there’s the issue of the wheelchair itself, which provides enough support to enable Rudy to walk on his own. From Rudy’s point of view, however — and there’s no other way to put this — it’s a chick magnet, not just for humans but for his own species as well. Other dogs invariably are drawn to this canine Corvette. Just a couple of weeks ago, a bulldog (attractive, in its way, I suppose) got its sizeable head stuck in the cart’s infrastructure while investigating Rudy’s aforementioned butt. It took three adults to free the smitten dog.

There’s also the lynchpin of Rudy’s condition: his lack of pain sensation in his rear legs. The surgeon said this is proof positive that his nerves are significantly damaged and that he probably will not walk again on his own. But recently he was stung by a bee on his right hind foot and reacted as if he was feeling pain. He also has always been able to move his back legs freely, in a rapid bicycling motion when held aloft, and has a fairly normal walking gait when in his cart. Even my wife’s orthopedic surgeon has his doubts, opining that “this dog is not paraplegic” and promising to actually examine Rudy if we could get an MRI of his back (which we plan to do once our first lottery check arrives).

And finally, there’s the constant adulation that comes seemingly from all directions. Somehow, people that my wife and I don’t remember ever meeting call “Hi Rudy” to him when we’re out for walks. They then proceed to fawn all over him and say things like, “How’s the poor little guy doing?” without ever actually speaking to either my wife or me. How do they know him and not us? Some of them even insist that they’ve seen him in movies or on TV.

Think about it. If you were worshipped like this, wouldn’t you maintain the ruse? Think of our sympathetic attachment to Rudy the football player; as the stadium caretaker in the movie said to him: “You’re five-foot nothin’, 100 and nothin’ and you have barely a speck of athletic ability.” We loved movie Rudy for that, in much the same way that the people of the Vineyard, Los Angeles, and seemingly the world seem to adore doggy Rudy.

And he knows it. He’s a celebrity and clings fiercely to that image.

I know some of you will think it unfair of me to attribute such sinister motives to this poor little pooch; that, selfishly, I’m more interested in regaining attention for myself.

To which I reply: Aaaaaawwwwmmm?