Oogy_ The Dog Only a Family Could Love - Larry Levin [13]
The surgery was over, but the dog wasn’t out of the woods: The hospital team soon discovered that their patient would not eat. He would occasionally take a little soft food, but not the quantity that he needed in order to regain his strength; neither did he offer any visual or behavioral clues as to what was interfering with his ability to eat. Dr. Bianco did not know if it was an internal complication or something else. Bloodwork gave no indication of infection. There was a fistula just below where the pup’s left ear had been. Dr. Bianco simply had a gut feeling as to what he needed to do next. He reached into the jaw with a forceps and felt loose bone. He extracted a piece of the dog’s jawbone about the shape and size of a fifty-cent piece. A section of the dog’s lower mandible had been broken off and had been digging into the roof of his mouth whenever he bit down, sending a lightning bolt of pain through his being. He had been in such extensive discomfort that he could not functionally operate his mouth, but he had never showed this. His threshold for pain was extraordinary.
The forty-five-minute procedure to remove the shattered bone enabled the dog to eat again. He began to take solid food on a regular basis and started to gain strength and to put on weight.
Dr. Bianco was in awe of the power of the beast that had inflicted the wounds with which he had had to contend. The dog that had grabbed this pup had a bite forceful enough not just to fracture, but to break off a piece of his jaw. Dr. Bianco had attended seminars given by humane societies and rescue centers to teach veterinarians how to recognize injuries associated with dogfighting. As part of this training, he had seen films of actual fights, and he could easily imagine the scene that culminated in the devastating injuries the pup had suffered. The fighting dog would have grabbed the pup, which would have been howling and bawling and squealing in pain and terror the entire time, and shaken him like a rag, slamming him into the floor, slamming him into the side of the cage had they been in a box. It was nothing short of a miracle, given the pup’s malnourished state, that he had survived the attack at all. To have also survived the subsequent prolonged period of suffering and inattention, the loss of blood and extensive infection, the absence of food and water, and then the surgical trauma was, in Dr. Bianco’s estimation and experience, truly miraculous.
Diane had been aware of all of this, too. Dr. Bianco knew that Diane had had an almost visceral response to what this dog had endured and that her determination to save the dog was in direct proportion to the extent that she sensed he had suffered. She did not want him to die, and she would not let him. She had saved the dog from certain euthanasia and then set in motion the process to provide some semblance of normality in the dog’s life.
For Oogy to have survived all of this certainly suggests that he had to have been fighting to stay alive. But based on what his life had been up to that point, what would have driven that determination? I want to believe that he sensed there was something better waiting for him.
Trauma is easier to overcome than long-term maltreatment, because abuse becomes a way of life and affects the dog’s spirits. Although the pup had suffered both trauma and abuse, because he was so young and neither had been prolonged, neither seemed to have had a permanent effect on him. He continued to heal and then began to flourish. His condition and the cruelty he had endured produced a heartfelt, deeply caring reaction among the hospital staff. His happy, affectionate nature was seemingly more pronounced because of the horror he had undergone. They warmed to him. As Diane described it, “He became everybody’s dog.” The entire staff participated in caring for the dog and nurturing him. Buoyant with optimism, after another ten days Diane took him home to begin fostering him for adoption. She named him Eli because he was white, which made her think of a cotton