Oogy The Dog Only a Family Could Love (15 page)

He trusted us. All of us.

Once he was allowed to come home, Oogy still had to wear the E-collar. In almost comical fashion, he walked into doorjambs with it and banged it on walls or against cabinets, eventually cracking it into pieces. I replaced it with a somewhat smaller one so that he would have less trouble navigating the house. We removed the E-collar when Oogy ate, and after several days, we would remove the collar when we were sitting with him. This allowed him to feel more comfortable, and if he started to scratch or lick his stitches, we could stop him and put the collar back on. Before we went to sleep, we would put it on him for the night.

Ten days after the surgery, Ardmore removed the stitches. The white fur was growing back.

Oogy’s face is an unavoidable, constant reminder of what he has had to endure. His face
is
what he has had to endure. Now there is a small black hole where Oogy’s left ear used to be. On the right side of his head, the undamaged side, his coat is feathered behind the ear. On the left side, however, where the skin of his neck has been pulled forward, the feathering is just behind his eye and in front of where the ear would be if he had one. Instead of being smooth and seamless, the line of feathering on his left side is ragged and slightly raised, like an aerial photograph of sea foam washing up on a shoreline. This is actually the line that represents where the two parts of Oogy’s face were sewn together. It runs from the top of his skull to the underside of his jaw. Because part of his jawbone had been broken off, removing support for Oogy’s facial structure, the shape of his face shifted as he grew. In addition, the flesh and muscle on that side of his forehead atrophied from lack of blood flow, gradually causing the left side of the top of Oogy’s skull to slope downward, whereas the left side of his face has been pulled slightly upward from the surgeries. As a result, he appears lopsided. His right upper jowl hangs below his lower jaw in normal fashion, but his left one does not; his left eye is not parallel to his right eye but is slightly higher on his face and somewhat larger. The left side of his large black nose angles upward while the right side does not. Viewed straight on, he looks like a portrait that has been torn in half but not quite properly aligned before being taped back together. This misshapen visage has also given him what one woman described as “a permanent smile.” It’s there, especially from the front, a slight turnup at the corner of his mouth, as though he is hearing some subtle, wry joke to which no one else is privy. The flesh where his muzzle and neck have been joined feels slightly corrugated.

Because a piece of his jaw is missing, there is not enough bone for his lower lip, a piece of which hangs down like a tiny valance. As a result of the ever-present moisture from inside his mouth, this part of his lip collects all kinds of dust, food, and other detritus that dries into a stiff paste. We routinely remove the gook that collects on the part of his lip where it hangs down. It is as natural to us as petting him. I have told the boys that when they are older, they will recall these reflexive, habitual acts of kindness with great fondness. It is the kind of unique act of loving intimacy that helps forge the connection and the bond. Oogy hates the sensation of having his lip cleaned because we literally have to pull the muck off of him like adhesive tape, but he seems to appreciate the fact that we are willing to do so.

Early one evening during the summer of the year that Oogy’s face was rebuilt, he came hobbling into the house from one of his routine forays out in the yard. He could not put any weight at all on his right rear leg. It was drawn up tight, almost as though it had been suddenly compressed. He hobbled in on the other three and made it as far as the hallway, where he collapsed. All that he could manage to do was lie there, panting. He did not moan or whimper or otherwise vocalize, but his inability to put any weight on his leg was a testament to the pain he was in. He even coughed up some yellow bile. I had some sedatives left over from the prior surgery. I fed him a dose in a piece of meat, and although he would not eat anything more, this helped him to sleep.

That night, I slept on the floor next to him. I knew that if I didn’t, he would risk further injury by climbing up the stairs to be with me, since the boys were away at camp. As much as I was trying to protect him from hurting himself, I was also doing it to make myself feel better, because there was nothing more that I could do for him. I had no pain medicine to give him. As early as I could get Dr. Bianco to see him, I picked Oogy up and carried him to the van, then shot over to the hospital. Ordinarily, Oogy would start whining and yelping when he got within six blocks of the hospital. This time, he lay curled on the floor for the entire trip.

Once we arrived at the hospital, I lifted him out of the van and lugged him up the steps. Inside, he lay on the floor at my feet, panting. When Dr. Bianco appeared, two of the technicians carried Oogy into one of the examination rooms. Dr. Bianco did some manipulations with the leg. “It’s a torn ACL,” he informed me.

“A torn what?” I asked.

“Ligament — his anterior cruciate ligament, or what’s generally called the ACL,” he explained. “He tore it.”

“How’d he do that?” I wondered.

“Who knows? He could have been running in your yard and stepped in a hole. It’s going to have to be surgically repaired.”

“Can you fix it?” I asked.

“No,” Dr. Bianco said. “Unfortunately, compared to the type of surgery Oogy needs, what I do is remove warts.”

Dr. Bianco recommended a hospital some forty minutes away where a specialist performed ACL reconstructive surgery. “With smaller dogs they can actually replace the ACL with fishing line,” he explained. “But given the muscles in Oogy’s leg, this is going to require special surgery. This guy is not cheap, but he’s the best there is. It doesn’t pay to take any chances, especially with a dog as massive and as special as this one.”

It was enough for me that Dr. Bianco had recommended this surgeon as the best option under the circumstances. There was never a question that he always had Oogy’s best interests at heart.

“How much is it going to cost?” I asked. “Do you have any idea?”

“I’m not sure. Probably around fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars.”

I called the hospital and made an appointment. Oogy was evaluated that same afternoon and scheduled for surgery on the next day. When I met with the surgeon, he exchanged no pleasantries or small talk with me. He appeared to exhibit no interest in the animal before him. He explained how he would saw down the bones and then use steel plates that would be screwed into the bones to hold them together. He showed me the X-rays of Oogy’s leg and drawings of what the procedure would involve. The actual cost of the surgery was almost double what Dr. Bianco had anticipated. On the drive home, I battled the feeling that I had failed Oogy. I had told him that I would do everything in my power not to let anything bad happen to him again. While I had known that such a pledge would be difficult to uphold, it had never occurred to me that it might be impossible.

Late in the afternoon of the next day, the surgeon called to let me know everything had gone well. The hospital kept Oogy another two days for observation. After twenty-four hours, however, I was allowed to come for a short visit. I went into one of the examination rooms, and after a few minutes Oogy came hobbling out, wearing another E-collar. I sat next to him on the floor — I always feel more comfortable in such moments if I am on his level — and he put his head in my lap. I fought back tears, I felt so bad for him. It just seemed never to end. A jagged pink scar ran several inches down the outside of his right leg, held together by a number of tiny black stitches. I wanted Oogy to think of better things; I wanted to soothe him. I tried to think of songs, but I forgot the words to everything. Then I started to softly speak some of the words of a poem that inexplicably popped into my head, one an old friend had recited to win a contest back in sixth grade. It was rhythmic, and though I could remember only the first of the verses, as I started to speak, Oogy’s tail began to wag. I repeated the lines several times. Maybe it was simply the tone of my voice, but it really seemed to relax him.

I hated the drive home that afternoon.

When I returned to pick him up the next day, I was told to keep him sedated and give him some painkillers for the next week. The surgeon also told me that Oogy was allowed very limited exercise, several walks a day in the yard and always on a leash. There was to be no running, jumping, or climbing, and I was to confine him in the house to a six-foot-by-ten-foot room for the next two to three months.

“There’s no way that’ll happen,” I told the doctor. “He’ll shred the door.”

“Well,” the doctor said, “do the best you can.”

I set Oogy up in the dining room. The sun streamed through the glass wall, which made the room nice and warm, just the way he liked it. His favorite chair (which had actually become so covered with Oogy fur that it even
looked
like him) was in there. I closed the doors leading to the hallway. I brought in his water dish; I also brought in his bone blanket, spread it over the rug, and laid a bone on top of it for him. I made sure he was comfortable. Then I looked at the swinging door leading to the kitchen, trying to figure out what I could place against it that would prevent him from pushing it open. That’s when it dawned on me that he might try to push against it if he felt he could move it at all, which might lead to more problems than it prevented. Since it was a swinging door, I’d have to effectively block both sides lest he try to pull it open from the dining room. So I figured, Okay, he can access the kitchen, too, and I left that door open and closed the door leading from the kitchen into the hallway. Then I said good-bye and went to the office for a few hours.

When I returned home, I found Oogy sleeping on the dining room table.

The boys were away at camp for the rest of that week. Night came, and Jennifer eventually went up to bed. Earlier that evening, I had cut a piece of plywood the width of the stairs. I slid this into place between two of the banister newels to block Oogy’s access to the second floor and followed Jennifer upstairs. No sooner had I climbed into bed than I heard Oogy’s whine, followed quickly by a crashing noise. Within seconds, Oogy was standing next to the bed, wagging his tail and asking for attention. He had leapt over the plywood barrier. It was apparent that the only way to keep him from using the stairs was for me to sleep with him on the first floor. I gathered up a comforter and walked very slowly downstairs with him. I placed the comforter and a pillow on the family room floor, then lay down about three-quarters of the way to the right side of the comforter. I knew from prior experience that as I would move in my sleep, Oogy would move with me and that it was essentially impossible to get him to move back so I could reclaim my own space. Oogy curled up next to me, and we both eventually dozed off.

Luckily, it was summer, so it was not a problem when Oogy needed to go out in the night. Oogy and I would slowly circle the yard once or twice under a canopy of stars — just the two of us and a few owls alive in our part of the world, watching the blinking lights of a plane slowly traversing the sky overhead, listening to the occasional passage of distant vehicles, all the flowers, red and yellow and white, now colorless in the clearing in front of the hedges.

I slept in the family room for the rest of the week, until the boys came home from camp. It was the only way to make certain that Oogy wouldn’t try to climb the stairs. I slept on the floor, not on a couch, because I knew that Oogy would climb onto the couch to sleep alongside me, putting pressure on the recently repaired joint. When the boys came home, they readily took over the job of sleeping downstairs with Oogy. They saw this partly as a responsibility that they felt they were better equipped to handle than their old dad and partly as a cool adventure. But when Oogy needed to go outside, he would go to the back door and start whining and barking. And I was always the one who heard him — the boys slept deeply — and the one who would accompany him. It was neither an imposition nor a demand. He needed me. And it enabled me to feel good about myself. I enjoyed being relied upon and being able to help.

As it turned out, the boys’ willingness to sleep downstairs was the start of another phase of their lives. They never moved back upstairs into their own rooms. It didn’t take long for them to realize that it was actually teenage boy heaven down there. For years after Oogy had ruined the two Chesterfield sofas, there was nothing much in the formal living room, with its manteled fireplace and brass wall sconces supporting hurricane lamp electric lights, and we rarely used it. Then, slowly, it mutated into more of a recreation room than anything else. We put a ping-pong table in there, then a wide-screen TV that Jennifer was given as a gift for some environmental work she did for a client, and an Xbox 360 soon followed. There was also a wide-screen TV in the family room, and a DVD player in each room. What wasn’t there was just as essential to the downstairs experience: Jennifer and I were
upstairs
and could not listen to phone calls, ask about text messages, or tell the boys to turn off the TV or get off the computer and
get to sleep
.

Upstairs, where both boys slept from the time they were three until they turned fifteen, their rooms have been frozen in time like broken clocks. The sports trophies they earned throughout their elementary and middle school years line the windowsills in both rooms. Bookcases are filled with books that haven’t been opened in years. In and on top of the dressers are clothes that will never be worn again and stuffed animals that have been abandoned. The only recent additions are some athletic plaques and awards from high school, as well as some newspaper clippings recounting their victories in sports.

Following his ACL operation, Oogy was permitted only one form of exercise: walking around the yard. We did this routinely in the morning and evening, and I would come home at least once during the middle of the day for a third go-round; otherwise, his leg would stiffen up on him. Weekends, I added one or two more of these strolls. In addition, I massaged his knee every morning before work and every evening before bed. Ardmore eventually took out the stitches.