Oogy_ The Dog Only a Family Could Love - Larry Levin [3]
By the time I have brought breakfast to the boys and returned to the kitchen, Oogy is standing by the back door. When I walk into the room, he barks once at me to let me know that he wants to go outside, as though I otherwise wouldn’t know he is there and would simply overlook eighty-five pounds of white, one-eared dog.
“Okay, okay. Here we go,” I tell him. “Let’s put the magic collar on.” I bend over him and clip the red nylon collar for the electronic fence into place alongside his regular collar, which has a little blue bone-shaped tag with his name and our telephone number on it and a red, heart-shaped rabies vaccination tag. “Be careful out there,” I tell him. I tell him the same thing every time he leaves the house to go into the yard, day or night. As parents, Jennifer and I have tried to prepare the boys for what they will encounter in the world once they’re on their own, but with Oogy it’s different. At least we have had the opportunity to try to teach the boys how to choose; I cannot prepare Oogy to weigh his options and select a safe course, and I do not want anything bad to happen to him ever again. Once he is out the door, I have no control over what he will encounter. As a result, letting him outside often feels like an act of faith.
I pull open the door and Oogy sticks his head out. His nose is in the air, nostrils twitching, reading the news on the wind. His ear is alert, as though somewhere there is a sound he does not fully understand. Then he wriggles past the screen door into the yard. I am still rinsing out his food bowl when the boys, finished with their breakfast, bring in their cereal bowls and glasses, letting them and the spoons clink noisily into the sink.
They are taller than me now. When they were toddlers, most people had a difficult time distinguishing one from the other; the kids in preschool called them by the same name, “DannyNoah,” just to be sure they had it right. Both have the same strawberry blond hair that curls when it gets long (Jenny calls it an “Izro,” an Israeli Afro). They have the same gray green eyes, the same skin tone. The major distinction between them has always been a barely noticeable variance in height and weight, which is now more pronounced than when they were younger. Noah, who has always been slightly taller than Dan, shot up this past year, adding several inches, and is now noticeably the taller of the two. Jennifer thinks that if Dan had not cut weight for the last four years during wrestling season, he would be as tall as Noah. I think she’s right.
They ask me about the weather forecast for the day and head upstairs to dress accordingly. I turn off the radio; I prefer the silence. Blue gray morning light now washes the windows. I rinse off the glasses and dishes the boys have left in the sink and put them in the dishwasher. I amble into the family room to stack pillows behind the old couch, then fold the comforters alongside the pillows. I return the futon bed back into the couch it came from and replace the pillows there. While he was still a puppy, Oogy tore out several chunks from the futon mattress, and every time the boys use it, pieces of yellow foam dot the floor like cake crumbs. I pick these up and dump them in a waste can. As I am doing this, I hear the creak of the back door opening and listen to Oogy walking down the hall.
When he appears in the doorway, I sit on the old couch and pat the open area next to me. “C’mon, puppy dog. Come up.”
He comes over to me, those large dark eyes searching for something in my face, and then clambers onto the couch. He leans his right side against the back of the couch, licks his lips several times as though he is savoring something, and, with a sigh, parks his butt on my lap as though he is recharging. I rub his ear, trace a finger over his broad