Oogy The Dog Only a Family Could Love (10 page)

I placed him back on the floor and stood up again. I tore open the end of the package that held the gauze pads and pulled one out, then cut the pad in half with a pair of scissors. Oogy backed up a few steps, but his gaze never left me. I opened the bottle of blue lotion and spread some onto the gauze. Then I sat back down on the terra-cotta-tiled floor of the kitchen, which was cool beneath me, and patted my lap.

“Come here, pal,” I said. “Come over here.”

Oogy looked at me.

“Come here, my friend.” I patted my lap again.

Oogy looked at me.

Holding the moistened gauze pad in my right hand, I craned my torso, reached over, and gently picked him up. He did not resist. I felt the warmth of his flesh and the smoothness of him and the tensile strength of his rib cage. Depraved acts had been committed against him,yet he sat before me waiting for my love and help.

I said to him, “No bad thing will ever happen to you again.”

I placed him between my legs, and he sat with his back to me. I ran my hands over both sides of his head, careful not to draw any distinction between the scored and the intact parts of his face, and then stroked down the sides of his body, the flanks of his rear legs. I reached underneath and scratched his belly. I slowly scratched behind his remaining ear. And then, for the first time, just as I would every morning and evening for the next six months, I began with small, circular strokes to rub the dampened gauze pad over the raw pink flesh that was the left side of Oogy’s head. It was as though I were trying to wipe away what had happened to him. The blue liquid turned soapy-looking as I massaged the leathery skin. I talked quietly to him the entire time. “Yes,” I told him, just as I would tell him every time, “you’re a
good
boy. This didn’t happen because of you. This does not mean that you are a bad doggy, an undeserving dog. We love you very much. You didn’t deserve this. Nobody does. This has nothing to do with who you are. You’re a lovely doggy. You’ll never have to be scared again. No one and nothing will ever hurt you again.”

I think that the first thing I did with Oogy, acting to assuage his wound, initiating immediate and intimate contact with the symbol of his vulnerability, helped to set the tone for all that was to follow. I took pleasure in the intimacy of this act, in my ability to nurture and support the precious vulnerability of this amazing little being. I felt privileged to be able to do it. Oogy never moved or fidgeted or tried to pull away.

When we were done, I rose and threw the gauze into the trash. I consolidated all the chew toys in a cookie jar and all the soft toys and rubber toys in a wicker basket in the family room. Oogy followed me back and forth as I did this. I put his medicine on a different shelf in the same cabinet where our own medicines were stored. Afterward, I poured myself a cup of cold coffee and nuked it in the microwave for fifty seconds. I said, “Follow me, my friend,” as though anything else were even remotely possible. With Oogy alongside me, wagging his tail as he sauntered along, I walked back down the hallway into the family room, where I had been sitting alone an hour before. I sat on the couch and said, “Here ya go, pal,” and patted the seat beside me. Oogy climbed up and sat there, leaning against me while I cupped his ear and rubbed his neck. Then he rose, circled several times, curled up against me, lay down with a snort, and went to sleep. Mornings were no longer mine alone, and I was thrilled about it.

I slowly drank the coffee and simply luxuriated in the experience of having this dog’s warmth planted against my thigh. Then I stood and headed for the kitchen. Oogy immediately jumped off the couch and followed me. I placed the cup in the sink and picked up the leash off the table. Kneeling, I attached the clip on the leash to Oogy’s collar. I put on my old red-and-black wool mackinaw, opened the back door, and walked with him out into the yard. I let the line play out about ten feet and locked it. Oogy meandered here and there, all new smells for him to assimilate and define. We did two full tours and then returned to the house. I removed the leash and went upstairs. Oogy followed me.

We walked into the bedroom. Martha was plumped up in the middle of the bed, as if in meditation. She did not even look at Oogy. When he saw her, he barked. It wasn’t an angry bark. It was a short one, intended to make certain that she knew he was around and to get her attention. Nothing changed in her demeanor. He barked again. As I was to learn, animals that didn’t want to play with Oogy frustrated him.

“Forget about it,” I told him.

Martha lived another two years, and from the day that Oogy walked into the house, she never left our bedroom again. Oogy would occasionally come up to the bedroom, where she sat serenely on the bed, and would bark and bark at her, but she paid him no attention whatsoever. She wouldn’t even deign to turn her head and look at him. He never would have hurt her — Oogy had slept next to an eighteen-year-old cat on the floor of the reception area every night when he had lived at the animal hospital. It was not that Martha was afraid. She was simply not interested — a
grande doyenne
with no time for the riffraff.

Oogy and I passed through the bedroom into the laundry room as he sniffed at everything, getting his bearings, starting to learn the parameters of his new world. I wondered if any of the smells he was absorbing encouraged him by reminding him of his ecstatic initial reaction to Noah and Dan. After I’d changed out of my sweats, we went downstairs, where I put on my sneakers. Then it was time for me to leave. I walked Oogy into the living room and opened the door of the crate.

“C’mon, Oogy,” I said, expecting he would rush in. Crate-trained dogs just loved being in them, right?

Oogy turned and walked into the hall, where he lay down in the doorway, put his muzzle on his forepaws, and looked at me dolefully. His back legs were splayed out like those of a frog. He could not have gotten any closer to the floor unless he had been glued onto it. I called him again, but he did not budge. I patted the side of the cage, as though the sound would entice him or remind him what this was really all about. He did not move. I walked over to him. I bent at the waist and patted my knees.

“I need to go to work,” I said. I was surprised by his reaction. Oogy clearly had zero interest in going into that crate.

“C’mon, Oogy. You need to get into the box.”

Oogy did not move.

I went back to the crate and called his name several times without, it seemed to me, the slightest hint of threat in my tone of voice. Oogy continued to lie on the floor and stare at me.

As he was not going to cooperate, my only solution was to pick him up and put him in the crate, which I did. He struggled and resisted. I had to push his behind in and swiftly shut the door, sliding the latching mechanism into place. As soon as he was inside, he turned around and began barking furiously. Each bark was as loud and as distinct as a gunshot in a train car.

Separation anxiety, I told myself.

“I’ll be back, you don’t have to worry about that,” I said to him. “I won’t leave you alone for more than a few hours. I want to be here when the boys get home.”

Oogy continued barking. He barked as I left the room and walked down the hall, and when I went into the driveway I could hear him barking and barking. I felt terrible that he missed me so much and thought he had been abandoned, but I saw no other choice. I needed to go to work, and I had to believe, based on what everyone had told me about crating, that Oogy would adapt and feel protected within its confines.

I knew the boys usually got home from school at a little before three, so I made sure to beat them by fifteen minutes. When I opened the back door, Oogy immediately began barking, and I could hear him banging around in the cage, his tail whacking the sides, making the metal joints ring like some atonal wind chime. His complete and utter joy at seeing me walk into the living room warmed my heart. I knelt and opened the door of the cage and he burst out, running around and into me while I patted his head and flanks and rubbed his back. That excitement level continued unabated as we walked back into the kitchen, where I put him on the leash and took him outside. As we were completing the second circuit of the house, I saw the boys crossing the neighbor’s front yard. When they saw Oogy, they came running over, surrounding him. They dropped their backpacks and knelt, and he raced back and forth between the two of them. I thought back to the laundry room earlier in the day and our first meeting and wondered what connections might be reverberating in his head.

“Welcome home, Oogy,” Noah said. “Welcome to our house.”

“We’re glad you’re here,” said Dan. “You’re part of our family now.”

The four of us went into the house. In the kitchen, the boys shed sweatshirts and backpacks. Oogy followed them into the family room, where the boys sat on the couch. Oogy jumped up and sat between them. He was already a part of them, and they each placed a hand on him. I sat on the coffee table in front of them and told them everything Diane had told me. I explained about the crate, the blue lotion, what behavior to expect. I told them it would be nice if they participated in walking and feeding Oogy. While experience told me there was little chance of that happening, it was worth a shot. But to see the way the three of them now sat together on the couch was the most important thing. Really, it was the only thing.

The boys’ late afternoon routine consisted of snacks and some TV to decompress. Oogy whined and barked at them while they ate, demanding to be included. Later, the boys began their homework while I started dinner and, afterward, did the dishes. When they tried to do their homework at the same time, Oogy refused to let them. He yapped and ran around, bit at their cuffs, picked up a chew toy, and butted them with it. As soon as someone paid attention to him, he calmed down. As a result, the boys quickly learned that one of them had to keep Oogy company, pay attention to
him
, while the other worked. After I was done cleaning up, I took over keeping Oogy occupied, giving him the attention he craved. He insisted on recognition. He insisted on inclusion. The family dynamics had been completely altered.

Jennifer had called to say she was going out to dinner with a client and anticipated she would be home sometime around 10:00. She asked how Oogy was doing.

“He’s great,” I told her. “The boys are madly in love with him already.”

After giving Oogy a peanut-butter bone, which I placed on an old blanket that forever after would be Oogy’s dedicated bone blanket, I sat on the couch and read. When he was finished with his bone, Oogy climbed up next to me and went to sleep. I realized that once Oogy understood that he could get my attention, his need for it changed.

After the boys had completed their homework, they joined us on the couch.

That night, Dan took his bath first. I filled the tub for him, testing the water, which he never liked to be too hot. Oogy stood in the room with me while I did this, then followed me downstairs while the tub filled and went back upstairs with Dan and me for the bath. I left the two of them in the bathroom, the door open, while I folded laundry.

Suddenly Oogy began barking, the sound reverberating off the walls of the bathroom like a dinner bell. I turned my head to look from where I was seated on the floor by the mound of clean laundry that always seemed to overflow the basket. Dan was submerged, completely out of sight, rinsing off his hair. Oogy had placed his forelegs on the side of the tub and raised himself in alert; the boy he loved had disappeared. As soon as Dan brought his head out of the water, Oogy’s anxiety disappeared and the barking ceased. Dan then moved closer to Oogy through the softly lapping water with an almost instinctual understanding of what would calm him. Oogy began to lick Dan’s face.

I helped Dan towel off, relishing the fruity scent of the shampoo, after which I drained and refilled the tub for Noah. Oogy stayed downstairs with Dan while Noah bathed. Then we were ready for the next phase of Oogy’s introduction into our lives.

From the first day that the boys had come home, we had read to them after bath time, a routine we followed, and which deeply involved us, until the boys started high school. It was a wonderfully bonding experience. Jennifer and I would take turns reading to them if we were both at home when bedtime arrived. Otherwise, whoever was at home would do it.

The boys had slept in the same room until they were ten. They were in cribs side by side for their first three years, and one would invariably climb over the sides into the other’s crib, and they would giggle and cavort until they fell asleep next to each other. After we moved, they slept in bunk beds and, for years, still often slept together. After the bunk beds, too, had been outgrown, as part of the process of confirming their separate identities, each of the boys got his own room, and each got to pick the color of his room. We alternated the room in which we read each night. Depending on how tired they were, the boys would still frequently fall asleep in the same bed.

The first night Oogy was with us, I read to them in Noah’s room.

I put a pillow against the wall and stretched out lengthwise across the foot of the bed. The only light came from a lamp on the windowsill to my right. The boys climbed in and got under the covers, their feet facing my left side. Each was wearing one of my T-shirts to sleep in, as they did every night. Oogy jumped onto the bed and curled up at their feet between them. I read for twenty minutes, and by then Noah was asleep, as was Oogy. I asked Dan if he wanted to go to his room.

“Stay here,” he mumbled, his eyes unable to open. Then he turned on his side and drifted off.

The original plan had called for Oogy to spend nights in the sheltering confines of his crate. But when the time came, I simply could not bring myself to remove him forcibly from Noah’s bed to put him in it. I thought of his insistent barking earlier in the day when he was separated from human contact, and since he would not be alone and I couldn’t imagine him leaving the bed for anything, let alone to destroy the house, I decided to give Oogy the benefit of the doubt. Clearly, he was much happier here than he would be alone in his crate. And after all, wasn’t this what it was all supposed to be about, anyway? What would be served by separating Oogy and the boys when they could stay together like this? He had slipped into place without disruption. It was almost as though he had always been there.