Oogy_ The Dog Only a Family Could Love - Larry Levin [29]
Once inside the house, in the kitchen, I put him down by his water bowl. Oogy sniffed it and then followed me over to where Diane was unpacking the shopping bags. He leaned against one of her legs and looked at me. I had a sense that he was appraising me.
Diane called him, fondly and interchangeably, “knucklehead” and “goofball.” She said he was wonderful with her two kids and her pets, and that her dog would be relieved now that she was the only dog in the house again. Diane had housebroken Oogy (well, mostly, anyway, as we would learn) and crate-trained him as well. I had never used a crate before, but everyone I had ever talked about it with said that his or her dog felt safe within its steel bars and equated the crate with security. I had no reason to anticipate that Oogy’s response to being confined would be any different.
The contents of the two shopping bags were a testament to Diane’s thoughtfulness and attention to what a young dog needed and what would occupy him and make him happy. She brought out several soft toys, flea and tick protection, heartworm pills, and a five-pound bag of dry food, explaining, “I’m not a big proponent of canned food. A lot of it is fatty junk.” She told me to give Oogy the heartworm pills and apply the tick lotion every thirty days. We talked about how much food I should give him and how many times a day he should be fed. We discussed how much exercise he would need. Diane told me that riding in a car seemed to upset Oogy’s stomach. She presented me with some powdered medicine in case he developed diarrhea, as he had been prone to during his adjustment to real food. She took out and handed over a package of gauze pads and a blue antibiotic lotion that also served as a moisturizer and explained that I needed to wipe Oogy’s scar tissue twice a day to minimize discomfort by keeping the scar tissue from drying out. Finally, Diane asked me where I wanted the crate set up. We walked down the hall, Oogy trotting along with us.
“I picked up some dog food as well,” I told her. “Has Oogy eaten today?”
“I fed him before I brought him over,” Diane told me. She asked where his new name had come from. I told her about my flash of inspiration.
The largest amount of open space was in the living room at the end of the hall. The only furniture in it was the baby grand piano my parents had given us, a coffee table between two small camelback sofas from Jennifer’s mom, and my old stereo equipment and speakers. The turntable, tape deck, tuner, amp, and preamp had not been hooked up or plugged in since we had moved in nine years earlier, victims of technological advancements that had left them in the dust — literally and figuratively. In fact, I could not recall anyone ever sitting in that room other than me. Occasionally on a Sunday morning, I would do the crossword puzzle in there just to get away from the jabbering on the TV where the boys were in the family room.
Diane showed me how to unfold the crate and tighten the fasteners that held it into place. If I wanted to take it down and pack it, all I had to do was reverse the process. I took an old beach towel and spread it out on the floor, and we moved the box onto the towel to protect the floor and keep it from getting scratched up. I put Oogy’s blanket in there and folded it carefully to provide maximum cushioning for him. I went back into the kitchen and found a plastic bowl from when the boys had