OOGY.
When Oogy was four months old and weighed thirty
five pounds he was tied to a stake and used as bait for a Pit Bull. The left
side of his face from just behind his eye was torn off, including his ear. He
was bitten so hard a piece of his jaw bone was crushed. Afterward, he was
thrown into a cage and left to bleed to death.
I am not a religious man, but I can only conclude that at that moment God
turned around and paid attention. The police raided the facility, found Oogy,
and took him to Ardmore Animal Hospital , where Dr. Bianco stitched him up and
saved him.
This coincided with the last weekend of life for our cat, Buzzy, who was 14 at
the time. My sons and I had taken Buzzy to AAH for his last visit. The staff
had gathered Buzzy in when out comes this pup that looked like nothing more
than a gargoyle. He covered us with kisses. The boys and I fell instantly in
love with him.
Life goes out one door and in another. 'This is one of the happiest dogs I've
ever met' Dr. Bianco said. 'I can't imagine what he'd be like if half his face
hadn't been ripped off.' Then, Dr. B said, 'I am not going to tell you the
things this dog has been through.' Dr. B's assistant, Diane, took Oogy
into her home for several weeks to foster him and make sure he was safe and to
crate-train him.
Once Oogy came into our house, for my sons, then 12, it was like having a
little brother. Whatever they did and wherever they went, there was Oogy. Oogy
had to get involved in whatever the lads were doing. He became known as The
Third Twin.
Dr. B thought Oogy was a Pit or Pit-mix and would get to be about 45 pounds..
By the time of his first checkup, Oogy weighed 70 pounds. When we walked in
the door for the visit, one of the women who works at AAH exclaimed, 'That's a
Dogo!' I asked, 'What's a Dogo?' She said, 'I'm not sure.'
We went online and learned that the Dogo Argentina is bred in Argentina to
hunt mountain lion and boar. Oogy can run about 30 miles an hour, all four
legs off the ground like a Greyhound. His leg muscles are so strong that, when
he sits, his butt is a half-inch off the ground. Dogos hunt in packs. Dogos
hurl themselves against their prey and swarm it.
Oogy has a neck like a fire hydrant to protect him when he closes on his
prey. He is built like a Pit Bull on steroids, with white fur as soft as
butter and black freckles. Fully grown, Oogy is 85 pounds of solid muscle, but
he does not know this and sits on us. He absolutely craves physical contact.
He is full of kisses and chuffs like a steam engine when he is happy. He has a
heart as big as all outdoors. One of the traits of the breed is that they
fully accept anyone their family does. It is not unusual to come home and find
three teenagers on the floor playing a video game and Oogy sprawled across
their laps like some living boa.
Oogy hated the crate, and would bark and bark whenever we put him in. This
puzzled me because I had been told by people with crate-trained dogs that
their pets love the crate and feel secure in its confines. When Oogy was about
eight months old, we hired a trainer who also happened to be an animal
'whisperer.' We introduced her to Oogy and she sat on the floor for a full
five minutes talking to him. We could not hear a word she said. When the
trainer lifted her head her eyes were brimming with tears. 'Oogy wants you to
know' she said 'how much he appreciates the love and respect you have shown
him.' Then she asked about his routine. I started by showing her where he
slept in the crate. She said immediately, 'You have to get him out of that
box'. 'Why?' 'Because he associates being in a box with having his ear ripped
off.' It was a smack-myself-in-the-forehead moment. Oogy never went back in.
Given what Oogy endured and what he is bred for, people are constantly
astonished that he loves animals and people as much as he does. Walking
with Oogy is like walking with a mayoral candidate. He has to meet everyone. A
number of people we encountered in the neighborhood early on told me they were
afraid of Oogy because when they would walk or jog by the house, Oogy would
bark at them and trot parallel to them, and given his size and looks... But
everyone falls in love with Oogy. By the end of their initial encounter they
are rubbing, petting, even kissing him on the nose. Oogy kisses them back.
Because of the way he looks, when people meet him for the first time they
almost always ask if he is safe. I tell them, 'Well, he has licked two
people to death.'
For the first year and a half of his life, part of Oogy's face was normal and
the other part looked like a burn victim's. People who saw him in passing
could not grasp the duality. As Oogy grew, the scar tissue spread. He could
not close his left eye, so it wept constantly; his lip was pulled up and back.
Dr. B said Oogy was in constant pain. So, in January 2005, Dr. B. rebuilt
Oogy's face. When all the scar tissue was removed, there was a hole in Oogy's
head the size of a softball. After removing the scar tissue, Dr. B took grafts
and pulled the flaps together and sewed Oogy back up. Now Oogy has a hairline
scar, but other than that looks just like any normal one-eared dog.
An essential part of this story is the fact that AAH has never taken a dime in
payment for anything they have done for Oogy. I never asked them for such an
arrangement. When I went to pay the first bill I was told, 'Oogy's a no-pay.'
I never asked why this is. Oogy is their dog. We are just lucky enough to look
after him.
Because some of his jaw bone was removed in the initial surgery, some of
Oogy's lower left lip droops and a repository for dust and dirt. It is second
nature to us to pull the detritus off his lip when we sit next to him. One day
I told my sons that when they tell their children about Oogy, they will
remember this routine act of kindness. I think that, on some level, every day
we try to atone for what happened to him. Last summer Oogy had ACL surgery;
his body ultimately rejected the steel plates and developed an infection so
his leg had to be opened up a second time and the plates removed. When I went
to pick him up following the second surgery, the Technician who brought Oogy
out said, 'This is a great dog. I really love him.' I said, 'Yep, we're lucky
to have him'. The Tech looked at me and said, 'No, you don't understand. ! I
see hundreds of dogs each week, and every once in awhile there is a special
one. And you have him.'
When I related that story to Dr. B he said, 'But we already knew that.'
Oogy's name is a derivative. The first day I was told we could adopt him I was
thinking, 'This is one ugly dog.' But we couldn't call him 'Ugly.' Then I went
to a variation of that from my youth, 'Oogly,' and his name followed
immediately. Two years after we named him we learned that Oogy is the name of
the Ghost Dog in the film, 'The Nightmare Before Christmas.' This is not
inappropriate.
On a recent Saturday afternoon Oogy was curled up on the couch asleep, his
head in my lap, and I was thinking about his life is now as opposed to the way
his life had been before. Would he have sensed he was dying? Was he conscious
when the police put him on a rubber sheet and took him to the Ardmore
Animal Hospital ? Oogy went to sleep in a world of terror and searing
pain and awoke surrounded by angels in white coats who were kind to him, who
stroked him gently and talked softly to him. Instead of people who baited and
beat and kicked him, he was surrounded with healing mercies. I realized
then that Oogy probably did not know he had not died and gone to heaven.
So I told him.
