Oogy_ The Dog Only a Family Could Love - Larry Levin [32]
“Forget about it,” I told him.
Martha lived another two years, and from the day that Oogy walked into the house, she never left our bedroom again. Oogy would occasionally come up to the bedroom, where she sat serenely on the bed, and would bark and bark at her, but she paid him no attention whatsoever. She wouldn’t even deign to turn her head and look at him. He never would have hurt her — Oogy had slept next to an eighteen-year-old cat on the floor of the reception area every night when he had lived at the animal hospital. It was not that Martha was afraid. She was simply not interested — a grande doyenne with no time for the riffraff.
Oogy and I passed through the bedroom into the laundry room as he sniffed at everything, getting his bearings, starting to learn the parameters of his new world. I wondered if any of the smells he was absorbing encouraged him by reminding him of his ecstatic initial reaction to Noah and Dan. After I’d changed out of my sweats, we went downstairs, where I put on my sneakers. Then it was time for me to leave. I walked Oogy into the living room and opened the door of the crate.
“C’mon, Oogy,” I said, expecting he would rush in. Crate-trained dogs just loved being in them, right?
Oogy turned and walked into the hall, where he lay down in the doorway, put his muzzle on his forepaws, and looked at me dolefully. His back legs were splayed out like those of a frog. He could not have gotten any closer to the floor unless he had been glued onto it. I called him again, but he did not budge. I patted the side of the cage, as though the sound would entice him or remind him what this was really all about. He did not move. I walked over to him. I bent at the waist and patted my knees.
“I need to go to work,” I said. I was surprised by his reaction. Oogy clearly had zero interest in going into that crate.
“C’mon, Oogy. You need to get into the box.”
Oogy did not move.
I went back to the crate and called his name several times without, it seemed to me, the slightest hint of threat in my tone of voice. Oogy continued to lie on the floor and stare at me.
As he was not going to cooperate, my only solution was to pick him up and put him in the crate, which I did. He struggled and resisted. I had to push his behind in and swiftly shut the door, sliding the latching mechanism into place. As soon as he was inside, he turned around and began barking furiously. Each bark was as loud and as distinct as a gunshot in a train car.
Separation anxiety, I told myself.
“I’ll be back, you don’t have to worry about that,” I said to him. “I won’t leave you alone for more than a few hours. I want to be here when the boys get home.”
Oogy continued barking. He barked as I left the room and walked down the hall, and when I went into the driveway I could hear him barking and barking. I felt terrible that he missed me so much and thought he had been abandoned, but I saw no other choice. I needed to go to work, and I had to believe, based on what everyone had told me about crating, that Oogy would adapt and feel protected within its confines.
I knew the boys usually got home from school at a little before three, so I made sure to beat them by fifteen minutes. When I opened the back door, Oogy immediately began barking, and I could hear him banging around in the cage, his tail whacking the sides, making the metal joints ring like some atonal wind chime. His complete and utter joy at seeing me walk into the living room warmed my heart. I knelt and opened the door of the cage and he burst out, running around and into me while I patted his head and flanks and rubbed his back. That excitement level continued unabated as we walked back into the kitchen, where I put him on the leash and took him outside. As we were completing the second circuit of the house, I saw the boys crossing the neighbor’s front yard. When they saw Oogy, they came running over, surrounding