Oogy The Dog Only a Family Could Love (17 page)

These pictures, both strikingly similar representations of Oogy, one frozen in time eighty years past not far from where Oogy sleeps now, the other from an artist’s imagination twenty-five years ago, create a continuity of Oogy in our house, pre-dating his actual presence by decades. I hear Oogy echoing down the halls of time and back again like magic. He has been here for a long, long while.

When he was just over a year old and we were having trouble coping with Oogy’s energy, we hired a trainer at the recommendation of a friend. The trainer, our friend told us, claimed to be able to talk to animals, but she herself was skeptical. The morning the trainer came for her first visit, I introduced her to Oogy, who was lying on his blanket in the family room. The trainer sat on the floor next to him for a full five minutes. Jennifer, Noah, Dan, and I stood just outside the doorway to the room, in the hallway, watching the trainer bend and put her head next to Oogy’s, watching her lips move next to his ear; then she would pull back a few inches and focus her gaze on him before leaning forward to whisper to him again. The four of us were exchanging skeptical glances with one another. We could not hear a word she said — or anything Oogy said back to her, for that matter. We had hired the woman to train Oogy, not to talk to him.

When the trainer lifted her head after her discussion was complete, her eyes were brimming with tears. “Oogy wants you to know,” she said, “how much he appreciates the love and respect you’ve shown him.”

We were not sure how to react to this statement. We could understand the truth of what she said, of course. It made sense he would have felt that way. But the statement presented a number of possibilities. Had Oogy actually communicated that to her telepathically? Or, because the trainer could see that Oogy was well loved and could also see he had been abused in the past, was she simply making a logical deduction? In the end, though, I realized that it didn’t matter — the important thing was that she had learned this about Oogy. Even if she was only stating the obvious, the obvious was noteworthy.

The trainer then asked about Oogy’s daily routine. I started by taking her across the hall and showing her the crate where Oogy stayed when we left the house. I didn’t mention that Oogy resisted being put in the box, nor did I describe how he barked incessantly once he was confined. The trainer looked at the crate and without a moment’s hesitation turned to me and said, “You’ve got to get him out of that box.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because,” she said, “Oogy associates being in a crate with having his ear ripped off.”

It was a smack-myself-in-the-forehead moment. In my ignorance, I had attributed Oogy’s abhorrence of the crate to his frustration and anxiety at being separated from us. From that day on, Oogy never went back in the crate, which for him had represented a fundamental fear that he had had to confront on a daily basis. I felt awful that, even inadvertently, I had caused Oogy some fear. I should have known by his incessant barking that something was amiss, but I had not understood the reason. I had completely misjudged the level of distress this had caused him. The trainer’s intuitive grasp of this truth earned her my immediate respect and gratitude.

The experience with the trainer also had a wholly unintended and beneficial consequence for me. I began paying attention to how Oogy communicated not only with me, but with other people as well.

The pictures that suggest Oogy’s presence in our lives before he arrived, even the events that created a sense of inevitability that his life would be commingled with ours, are also a form of message. But on a daily basis, I pass messages to Oogy, both nonverbally and verbally, though not always in literal fashion, and he, in his own fashion, speaks to me.

There is some language-specific interaction. Although I was skeptical at first, I no longer doubt that Oogy understands certain specific words. For example, when I use the words
dog park
in a sentence, he gets very excited. I keep telling him that he can’t understand me when I say that, but his behavior contradicts this. It’s an association he has not with time of day (we go at different times) or with an action (like picking up the keys), but with the words I actually use.

There are also behavior-specific things I do that tell Oogy something. When I take off the collar for the invisible fence, he understands immediately that he is going somewhere. In the morning, when I put on my shoes, he knows that I am leaving and goes to his hiding spot underneath the dining room table as though he can somehow avoid the inevitable. His sadness is as palpable as a finger in my eye.

There are also times, even if I’m just talking nonsense to him, that he clearly grasps the feelings that my gibberish is meant to convey. The content is irrelevant; it is the emotions I’m sharing with him, through the tone of my voice or my affect, that speak to and comfort him.

For example, one Friday evening this past summer, while we were in the midst of an extended heat spell, I cooked Oogy some bones. This particular day had been over one hundred degrees. At ten in the evening, it was still steaming, the air thick with moisture. In the darkness outside, the sound of cicadas swelled and ebbed. Our house does not have central air-conditioning, and although the exterior walls are eighteen inches thick, the relative coolness the house can retain on the first floor had long since been baked out by the sustained pounding the heat had given us over the week. The boys were in the family room, where there is an air conditioner, watching TV. Oogy was sleeping on the floor next to them. Jennifer was out at the gym. And I was in the kitchen. I had ten small bones that I had baked for Oogy in the toaster oven and needed to put into the freezer. Oogy usually gets at least one bone each day. He prefers small bones; with his shattered jaw, he cannot grip large ones.

I put the bones into a bag and sealed it, and as I was placing the bag in the freezer, I saw Oogy standing in the entrance to the kitchen, staring at me. There was no light on in the eating area; the kitchen itself was only dimly lit. I had not heard him come in. It was as though he had been teleported. Some alarm only he could hear had sounded, awakening him. The food Klaxon was gonging away: “Food alert! There is food in sector K-2. Repeat! Food in sector K-2!” The aroma of cooked meat had wafted down the hall, curling into his nose like a feathery hook; it had awakened him and caused him to rise, leading him to pad down to where he now stood. Or maybe he heard me opening the bag, the rustling sound familiar to him, significant. “I’m here,” he seemed to say to me. “What am I missing? Do I get anything to eat? Why didn’t you tell me there was food available?”

In response, the first thing I said to him was, “You’re a Dogo. The Dogo is a sturdy breed with a prominent black nose. I learned that tonight. You have a prominent black nose. Did you know that?”

His face was expressionless. He was looking for more information.

“You just missed it,” I told him. “You just missed the Ceremony of the Bones, when we place the baked bones into the freezer following the designs of an ancient ritual. Now, they are safely ensconced in the bowels of the freezer. However, I can tell you that later on tonight one very lucky dog will get at least one of the bones. After the Opening of the Freezer Door ritual. And,” I said, dropping my voice to barely a whisper, “confidentially, I have it on good authority that will be you.” I nodded at him, kissed him on the top of his skull, rubbed both sides of his head behind his ear and the unear, feeling the rough line of scar tissue that holds his face together.

“You’re a big baby dog,” I told him. I could see clearly the flap of flesh that had been his neck in the shadows playing on him, how it had been pulled forward and attached to what had remained of his face. “You’re a folded dog,” I said. “Do not fold, bend, spindle, or mutilate. Isn’t that how it goes?” He looked at me. His expression did not change. He stood perfectly still, tolerating my idiocy. And then I said, “Oops. Too late for you.”

I had no idea where these words were coming from, but I was sure he understood what lay behind them even if I did not. Just as I understand him. Because Oogy also talks to me.

Sometimes we are sitting together and I am reading or working on the laptop when he will start pawing and whining at me to notice him. There are times he will move off the couch where we are sitting together and start growling, demanding that I come to where
he
is and pay attention to him. “Do you want to go out?” I’ll ask him. “Do you want a bone? Do you want some attention? Come here.” Then he’ll bark at me. He wants me on his level. It’s that simple. So I will uncoil from the couch and lie down next to him, stroke him, and the murmurings cease; he has the attention he has asked me for.

As he has matured, Oogy’s ability to express his desire both for attention and for affection has evolved. I don’t really understand the source of his perception. It may be instinctual, a product of the years he and I have spent together emotionally committed to each other unclouded by the white noise — the relentless clatter and superficiality — that courses through the daily lives of human beings. Or it just may be that he comprehends much more speech than I give him credit for or can intuit signs from daily activities that I wouldn’t notice.

The first time this happened, he woke me at 6:00 on a Saturday morning. That evening, I would be going overseas for business. I had not taken out my suitcase or begun packing yet, so Oogy could not have had any apparent clue that I was going away. When I heard him come upstairs and he whined once and stuck that cold, wet nose in my face, I reacted by first asking him if he wanted to join me on the bed, hoping he wasn’t expecting me to go downstairs and let him out. I patted the mattress several times, but he made no move to join me. Instead, his hind legs danced sideways back and forth, and he continued to whine at me, never taking his eyes off my face. Then, resigned, I asked him if he needed to go out, and since he did not want to sleep next to me, I realized he did. I threw back the covers and followed him. Expecting that he would head to the back door, when we arrived on the first floor I turned left from the stairs and started in that direction. But instead of heading to the kitchen and access to the yard, Oogy went into the room to the right of the stairway where Dan was sleeping and climbed onto the couch. He sat there, waiting for me, looking directly at me. He wanted me to sit next to him. So I wormed my way onto the sofa, lifted up Dan’s feet, marveling at the thick blond hair curling over his legs, and slid underneath them, putting them on my lap. I was able to pull a part of the comforter over me. Dan never stirred. Oogy curled up between us and put his head on my lap, and as I rubbed his back and luxuriated in his warmth, he turned his head to look at me with utter adoration in his eyes, the ragged line that delineates where his face was sewn together defined in shadow by the light from the windows. We slept that way for another two hours.

Later that afternoon, when I started packing, Oogy came into the room and lay on the bed the entire time. Only when I had closed the suitcase, stood up, picked up the bag, and started downstairs did he jump off the bed and trail after me, following me from room to room until it was time for me to leave for the airport. Clearly, he somehow understood that I was going away and wanted to be around me as much as he could before then.

I am not, of course, the only person Oogy communicates with. Although neither Jennifer nor the boys have developed the same degree of intimacy with him given the demands of their daily routines, messages do pass back and forth between them. And his being, his visage, and his loving temperament, despite the destruction so obviously visited upon him, draw in person after person we meet outside the house. Because Oogy is much more than a unique personality and a loving pet. Who he is and what he has endured speaks to people.

A woman I know who is a columnist and author, and has been involved in animal rescue for decades on the West Coast, recently said to me, “Stories about fighting dogs that have happy endings are rare. Stories about fighting dogs that are inspirational are nonexistent.”

I have often wondered what exactly it is about Oogy that resonates with people. To a certain extent, each person has his or her own connection with him. Some appreciate Oogy’s demeanor; the word
sweet
has been used to describe him more than any other. When they have learned what he has gone through and have seen how he is in spite of it, people are simply moved by his resiliency, his placid dignity. In some people, I think, a certain degree of transference is inevitable as they come to see in Oogy the survivor they perceive themselves to be, an indomitable spirit in the face of adversity. Others, not necessarily physically damaged but emotionally scarred, who yet hope still to be loved, find another kind of encouragement: If this dog can go through the hell he did and emerge capable of giving and generating as much love as he does, so can they. His triumph over the most unspeakable brutality without any emotional ill effects whatsoever encourages many. And, I think, some people just appreciate the second chance Oogy has had, just as they hope they will get theirs if and when they need one.

But there is an element common to everyone who connects with him, and it took me a very long time to arrive at what that is. For most of us, life represents a balancing act among a series of highs and lows, the struggle to maintain equanimity in the face of so many polarities of experience. But no matter where we reside on this spectrum, all of us know that we will, eventually and without fail, have to deal with tragedy. People we care about disappear from our lives. Animals we love have to be “put to sleep.” (How’s that for a euphemism to help us deal with the loss?) Loved ones die and drift apart; illness eats up family members and friends in awful ways. Every day we stand an increased chance that our lives will in some way be diminished. And what appeals to everyone about Oogy is that he is proof that what we all know is lurking out there — the awful and, yes, inevitable tragic loss, the unexplainable savage attack, the seemingly insurmountable occurrence — can, in fact, be survived with love and grace intact, without bitterness or resentment, and with an appreciation for all that follows. Oogy is, right there in front of everyone he meets, tangible living proof that there can be happiness, love, and hope on the other side of unspeakable and unimaginable horror.