Oogy_ The Dog Only a Family Could Love - Larry Levin [26]
The dog had run to us as though he had instantly recognized that we were his family and he had been waiting all of his life for us to arrive. He knew who we were to him. The union was instantaneous and complete.
I asked Dr. Peters, “What happened to him?” It seemed rather obvious to me that the dog had been badly burned in a fire.
Very matter-of-factly, as if he were telling me the score of a game, Dr. Peters stated, “He was a bait dog.”
“What?” I asked. I was buying time to try to comprehend the enormity of his words. “What’s a bait dog?” I had never heard that term before, yet I had a sense it was nothing pleasant.
“He was used as bait for a fighting dog. That’s how they teach them to fight. They’ll use anything they can get. Poodles, cats, you name it.”
“Where do they get them?”
“Strays. Petnapping.” He raised the first two fingers of each hand. “‘Free to good home’ ads. Wherever and however they can.” He shrugged resignedly.
It was impossible for me to accept what had happened to this pup. To allow it to have happened under any circumstances — to have caused it to happen — was deplorable and repulsive. And there was something so radiantly special about this dog.
The pup had a muzzle that narrowed to a large black nose; his broad forehead, I later discovered, was the result of all the swelling from his injuries and the subsequent surgery. I thought he might be the kind of dog that General Patton had had.
“Is this a bull terrier?” I asked.
Dr. Peters laughed. “No, he’s a pit bull.”
“Where did he come from?” Dan asked.
“He was brought into the ER sometime over the weekend after a police raid. They found this guy bleeding to death in a cage. The SPCA told them to bring him here.”
“Why here?”
“We’re the only hospital around with an after-hours ER facility,” Dr. Peters explained. “Otherwise, the hospitals on the Main Line get injured animals on a rotating basis.”
“Do you know where this happened?”
“I don’t. All I know is that Dr. Bianco operated on him for hours and managed to save him.”
“Do you know how old he is?” Noah asked.
“Somewhere around four months. We can’t really be sure.”
“Of course,” I said. “How long has he been here?”
“He came in in December, but I don’t recall the date offhand. About a month.”
By this time, I had put the dog back down on the floor, and Noah and Dan and I were kneeling and petting him. He was prancing back and forth among the three of us, licking away. But the assistant needed to get him outside to do his business, so we said good-bye and watched them head out the door for their constitutional.
“Who does he belong to?” I asked, certain that an animal with such charm and personality and with so much affection, and who had been at the hospital for several weeks, would by now have found an owner. I was hoping against hope that this might not be the case, and when Dr. Peters told me, “No one,” I felt amazingly fortunate and gratified.
Then I said to the boys, grinning, “Guys? How about it? Should we adopt him?”
They both agreed without a moment’s hesitation.
“Well,” I said, “now that that’s settled, we have to get approval from the CEO.”
“Mom?” the boys asked in chorus.
“Sure. I’ll call on Monday,” I told Dr. Peters. “Don’t let anyone else put in a claim for him until then, okay?”
“I promise,” he said.
I felt giddy. I could not wait to get that dog into my house. When I took the boys back home, and we told Jennifer about the dog, she was less than enthusiastic. In fact, she said no.
She had her reasons. Our previous dog, also a rescue, had bitten a friend of the boys in an unprovoked attack; it had taken eleven stitches to close the gash in his face. Although that had happened over a year and a half ago, Jennifer was understandably fearful that an abused pit bull presented a realistic chance that someone, or someone’s pet, might be brutalized. We asked her to come meet the dog and experience his personality, to talk to Dr. Bianco about it. To my surprise, she agreed. But she also said that she was going to ask Dr. Bianco if he could guarantee that the dog did