by Larry Levin
From the outset, I was reluctant to discipline Oogy, as I was with the boys, by invoking anger, deprivation, or fear. Not only did I consider these techniques to be counterproductive, but I was worried that they might alienate him from us. And I especially didn’t want to use them with Oogy. He had already spent more than enough time afraid. I didn’t have it in me to do that to him again.
If there was a downside to this, I never saw it, but there were visitors to our house who found the extent of license Oogy enjoyed somewhat disconcerting. He sat and slept wherever he wanted, and on more than one occasion, he climbed onto the dinner table while we were eating. This happened one memorable time when college friends were over. They looked at Oogy as if he were on fire, and then back and forth at one another, and though they didn’t say anything about it, I never heard from them again.
As he grew out of puppyhood, Oogy continued to have an appetite for mass destruction that would not abate for another year and a half. One morning when the boys were in seventh grade, he chewed a hole in Noah’s math homework. Jennifer wrote a note to the teacher that began, “You’re not going to believe this, but…” He tore apart insulated galoshes, flip-flops, scarves, sneakers, shoes, plastic fruit, and the head of one of Noah’s lacrosse sticks. He chewed up hard rubber dustpans, fly swatters, and brushes. He ate books, barrettes, and toothbrushes, shredded newspapers, ripped apart magazines, and tore chunks out of books. There is a sizable glop of glue on the rug in the dining room because Oogy chewed the top off a bottle of the stuff, and there appears to be no solvent to dissolve it that won’t also take the rug with it. I have no idea how he avoided doing major damage to himself with that one. He ripped open packages, tore apart mail, ate a whole tray of brownies, chewed into countless boxes of energy bars, and raided the trash relentlessly. He ate plastic figures of the Lone Ranger and Tonto that Dan gave Jennifer one year for her birthday.
One holiday season, a friend sent Oogy a package of doggy treats that she had made. The deliveryman put the package behind the front screen door and pulled up the porch mat so that passersby would not see it. The weight of the mat prevented Oogy from actually opening the screen door, but he was able to chew open the exposed corner of the box and clean out one whole container of treats. He also took a bite out of the card that accompanied the gifts; it showed a shamrock next to a cartoon image of a white dog with the words Lucky Dog on it. I photocopied that in color and sent the friend the copy so she would know how much Oogy appreciated her thoughtfulness.
Jennifer came home from her exercise and yoga classes one Saturday and found food strewn all over the floor in the kitchen, the refrigerator door wide open. She assumed that I had been cleaning out the refrigerator and had become distracted, and put everything back in place. When I came downstairs after showering, she asked me about it. I told her I had been doing no such thing. When this happened a second time a few days later, I finally realized what was going on. I noticed that Oogy’s bag of food was missing, as was some cheese and the lunch meat that had been in the cold drawer. The fruits and vegetables had not been touched. The beverages and salad dressings had not been opened. What was left of the missing bags of food was in pieces underneath the dining room table, which is where Oogy likes to take his illicit treasure. He seems to think of it as his little cave, where no one can see him.
Oogy had figured out how to open the refrigerator.
I put a bungee cord across the handles for the freezer and the refrigerator adjacent to it. It was the only way to keep him out. On several occasions since then, though, when the last one of us to use the refrigerator has forgotten to clip the cord in place, Oogy has raided it. I can tell by his demeanor when I walk in the door. If he isn’t there greeting me joyously but is skulking, his body low to the ground, head drooped but watching me, I know he is feeling guilty of something, and the first thing I check is the refrigerator. Then I go into the dining room and clean up the debris.
So far, the freezer has remained safe. However, there are two floor-to-ceiling storage cabinets Oogy started to open, randomly selecting boxes and bags of food to tear into. Each cabinet has two doors, so we also started to keep a rubber band wrapped around the door handles of each cabinet; another bungee cord prevented Oogy from accessing the trash; a third kept him out of the corner cupboard, where his dry food is stored. On more than one occasion, he has accessed each of these. He rarely will open any of these places when we are home and often will not eat what he has pilfered; it seems the sheer knavery of the act was important to him. He could also be counted on to take any food left on the counter at any time, and did so regularly.
It was never the loss of the food that bothered me, but the idea that he might ingest plastic to get at the food, which could lead to blockage and necessitate surgery. This is why I posted signs around the kitchen as well as on the back door reminding everyone to make sure the cords and rubber bands were in place when they left the kitchen or the house.
As he matured, Oogy’s personality continued to exhibit a large portion of sheer mischievousness and playfulness. When I am making a bed, he will often jump onto it, lie down, and growl. He will roll onto his back, all four paws in the air, thrashing his head back and forth like a blind snake. He enjoys being covered with the sheet or blanket, wallowing around until his head emerges. Often when we are otherwise fully occupied, when I’m in the kitchen and the boys are doing homework, for instance, Oogy will pick up one of his soft toys and come into whatever room I am in and start bumping me in the butt with it. I am then supposed to stop whatever I am doing and follow him into the dining room, get down on all fours, and plod after him, chasing him under the table and around the chairs, while wherever he is, he will move someplace else under the table and growl at me while I veer in that direction. I have to let him win the tug-of-war that ensues when I am finally able to grab what he has in his mouth. Eventually, he will stop chewing on the toy and luxuriate in the attention I give him, which, after all, is what he has been after from the outset.
Almost every evening before settling down to sleep, he cases the room where the boys are watching TV or working on their laptops. He will go to the windowsills, the TV stand, the bookcase, the coffee table, until he finds something he knows he is not supposed to have, and he will grab it: a wallet, a flip-flop, a DVD box, a baseball cap. When we take it from him, he will go after something else. This last spasm of energy is a routine part of his day. When he has gotten over whatever it is that drove him to look for trouble, he will curl up next to one of the boys and sleep until morning.
To this day, if somebody cannot find something, Jennifer will suggest taking the search outside to see if Oogy has been working on it. The case for her cell phone has teeth marks in it. So do my favorite baseball cap and my new loafers. There is a picture of Dan and Oogy in the family room in an aluminum frame that has Oogy bite marks on it in the top left corner. I could not have thought that up, but it is not a bad marketing idea: customized frames with bite marks on them for people to use for pictures of their dogs. Oogy holds the copyright.
Eventually, as Diane had promised us, for the most part Oogy’s destructive forays ceased. There would always be the purloined piece of cheese, the gravy-smeared foil under the dining room table, but, as though exorcised, whatever it had been that drove him to his small frenzies disappeared as Oogy matured, and there came a time when we no longer had to worry what awaited us each time we returned home.
But we still use the bungee cords on the refrigerator.
CHAPTER 7
Surprises
Since it would be good for Oogy’s health to be able to run around in the yard and would keep him from chasing after people in the street, we decided to have a new electronic fence installed. The one in place when we had moved in had long since corroded into dust. The first company I called asked me what Oogy’s breed was. When I told the agent with whom I was dealing that Oogy was a pit bull, she told me that her company would not install an electronic fence. It was the
ir policy; they were afraid that if a pit bull got through one of their fences and attacked someone, they might be sued. The second company I called said that his breed would not be a problem.
An electronic fence is set up by inserting wire around the perimeter of the property, which is then marked by a series of small plastic flags. A charge runs along the wire controlled by a box attached to the house. Two conductive electrodes in a special collar rest against the dog’s neck. If he gets too close to the fence, he will hear a buzzing sound intended to warn him away; if he continues, he will receive a shock. I had to know what the experience felt like, so I held the collar in my hand and walked to the fence. It was as though I had stuck my finger into a live lamp socket.
Once the fence had been installed, it was time to train Oogy. I was shown how to lead him up to it until he heard the buzzing sound, the warning that he was approaching the perimeter. The first time we did this, Oogy did not know that there was any significance to the sound, and I had to let him get shocked. The idea was that he would associate the warning sound with getting a jolt of electricity. After that first experience, I repeatedly led Oogy up toward the fence until he heard the cautionary sound, then immediately pulled him back and away from the fence line so that he learned to associate the sound with the limits of his domain.
However, I encountered an unexpected problem with training Oogy. Because he has only one ear, he cannot triangulate sound. As a result, he appeared to be confused about where the warning sound was coming from. It seemed likely to me that because he could not tell where the sound was coming from, it might not act as a deterrent for him; that he might go forward when he heard the warning sound, not back away. Since I did not want to subject him to repeated shocks, I called the company that had installed the fence and explained my concern. They sent over a technician who assessed the situation and suggested that I sight-train Oogy. I would pull him up close to the fence line and wave one of the little blue flags when the warning sounded and then pull him back. As smart as he was, Oogy made the connection and visually learned the limits of the yard in short order.
I was warned that any dog was likely to go through the fence once and that once was usually enough to convince the dog not to repeat the experience. One day, not long after the fence had been installed and Oogy had been successfully trained, Noah and Dan were throwing around a lacrosse ball in the street. Oogy, of course, was having trouble with that arrangement. He was dashing back and forth on the lawn and barking. I could hear him, but I was not paying much attention. Suddenly, Dan was at the back door calling for me, and I was aware that the barking had stopped.
Oogy had gone through the fence to be with the boys.
He was sitting in the street, shivering, utterly stunned. He looked as if he had run into the side of a truck. I had to drive the car into the street to pick him up because he would not come back the way he had gone out. To this day, I have to drive him through the fence line whenever I want to take him for a walk. If I am carrying the collar in my hand and I get too close to the fence, when the buzzing sound starts, Oogy retreats.
Outside of the house, we regularly encountered negative reactions from people simply because Oogy was a pit bull who had evidently been involved in some sort of fighting adventure. These reactions were not based on the facts but clearly reflected prejudices based on all the negative things written about the breed. It was not unusual for people we encountered on walks to step out into the street so as not to have to get too close to him. Any number of times I tried to reassure them that he was very friendly, but his looks seemed to confirm their mental associations and frightened them.
On one walk that first spring, we passed by a party in progress at a neighbor’s house. A little boy was standing on the sidewalk with his dad. When Oogy started over to say hello, the dad asked, “Is that a pit bull?” When I answered that he was, the father very slowly picked up his son and walked backward into the house, keeping his eyes on us when he was not glancing back over his shoulder to see where he was going, and closed the door.
Another time, an elderly female neighbor had just exited her car as Oogy and I ambled by on one of our regular strolls. She asked, “What happened to your dog?” I told her that he had been used as bait for a fighting dog. “I hate pit bulls!” she said dismissively. And I was thinking, But you’re looking at one…
I still remember the look of revulsion and fear in the eyes of a woman we encountered at a local shopping center. Oogy and I had turned the corner from the parking lot to the sidewalk leading past a row of shops, and as soon as this woman saw us her eyes widened, she put both arms around her little boy and, before he knew what was happening, had dragged him inside the swinging doors of a store. Then, arms still around her son, she watched us through the glass facade as we passed. I gave her a big, friendly grin as we did so.
Not long after we had adopted Oogy, while I was taking him for a walk, we encountered two well-coiffed poodles with the total antithesis of Oogy’s tough-guy looks, and they started yapping at him. They sounded like Oogy on helium. When a dog barks at Oogy, he invariably looks at it as though it is a creature from another dimension. The only time Oogy will bark at a dog is if he cannot get to it to play, such as when we’re in the car and pass another dog walking by, or if he wants to play but the dog is ignoring him. I went to pull him away, but he slipped out of his collar and ran up to the poodles. Their owner panicked. While the only real danger that these poodles were in was that Oogy might accidentally step on one of them, this woman reacted as if her dogs were about to be tossed into a wood chipper. Her alarm, compounded by the yelping of her dogs, fed on itself and grew until I managed to grab Oogy, slip his collar back on, and drag him away.
The next day, a different neighbor passed me in the street. “I hear your dog went after the poodles,” she said.
That was the owner’s story, and she was sticking to it.
Walking with Oogy in the early days was like strolling with a mayoral candidate. He wanted to meet everyone he saw on the street. He would pull me like a small tractor to go over to the person, and if I would not cooperate, he would lie down in the street and refuse to go anywhere until the object of his attention had disappeared or, as usually happened, I relented and allowed him to go meet the person.
As the months passed, people from the neighborhood who were afraid of Oogy always changed their minds about him once they actually got to meet him and experienced his gentle, affectionate nature. It was not that people’s fear of Oogy was illogical or unreasonable. His face was frightening, and none of these people had any way of knowing that his barking was not designed to scare them. On the contrary, he barked and paced to tell them he was frustrated because he could not meet them. Unfortunately, none of these people were conversant in Dog.
One evening several months after Oogy had joined our family, he and I were out for a stroll when we saw a young woman approaching us. She was power-walking and talking into a headset at the same time. As she drew closer, I heard her say, “Ma, here’s the dog I told you about, the one I’m afraid of?” I stopped. Oogy stood and looked at her. His tail wagged slowly back and forth. She approached us cautiously.
I said to the woman as she drew nearer, “It’s okay. He’s perfectly safe. I wouldn’t be keeping him here in front of you if that wasn’t the case.”
After a brief hesitation, the woman came over to Oogy. She held out one hand, and he sniffed it. Then he licked her.
“I am so afraid of your dog,” she said, “that I stopped jogging by your house.”
“There’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of,” I assured her. “He only barks at you because he wants contact with you.”
“He seems very nice,” she admitted, nodding.
“He’s more than very nice,” I told her.
She cupped her hand under Oogy’s muzzle. Then she knelt and, fascinated by the texture of his fur, began to stroke his head and shoulders. Oogy lifted his head and licked her face. She asked me what ha
d happened to him, and I told her. By the time the encounter was over, the woman was kissing Oogy on the top of his head and massaging the muscles in his neck while he backed into her in appreciation.
Similar encounters happened on several occasions, and people’s hesitancy if not fear dissolved once they actually met Oogy.
There have also been times when we have been able to use Oogy’s intimidating appearance and apparently aggressive behavior to our advantage. Whenever there were strangers working in the neighborhood, I made it a point to let Oogy out of the house. “If someone is thinking of coming into our house,” I assured the boys when they were younger, “once they take a look at Oogy and hear him barking, they’re going to start thinking about looking for another house.” Once Oogy had joined the family, the boys lost any lingering sense of discomfort they might have had about being alone.
While, thankfully, I’ve never had occasion to test this theory, I have always felt that if Oogy sensed we were afraid or if he perceived some threat, he would immediately transform himself into a completely different animal from the one we have encountered in his life so far. Out and about or in the house, in the blackest of the night, I have never had any fear that someone will physically threaten us or do us harm. In my heart, there has been no doubt that the dog we adore and who kisses us incessantly could and would react instantly to protect us at all costs — that he would die for us rather than let us feel threatened or allow us to be hurt. Oogy is a guardian who, I am convinced, will do whatever needs to be done to save us from peril.
