Oogy_ The Dog Only a Family Could Love - Larry Levin [37]
“He’s like a little kid,” I told them.
“Yeah,” observed Dan, “but one who’ll never grow up.”
One morning shortly after Oogy came to live with us, and before we had the electric fence, after the boys headed up the street to middle school, I went out the door with Oogy to take him for a walk. He immediately slipped the collar and took off after them, following their scent. I ran along after him, though in a moment he was gone from view. When I found Oogy on the playground, he was surrounded by a dozen kids, including the boys, and a teacher’s aide. Oogy was sitting in front of the group. Several of the children were petting him calmly. I was somewhat embarrassed, but everyone else seemed to think that it was really cute how he had followed the boys up there. And I must admit, he had thoroughly surprised even me. I had run after him expecting the worst, some imagined manifestation of pit bull ferocity preprogrammed into my brain, when all there was to it was pure adoration of the boys and a desire to be with them.
From the outset, I was reluctant to discipline Oogy, as I was with the boys, by invoking anger, deprivation, or fear. Not only did I consider these techniques to be counterproductive, but I was worried that they might alienate him from us. And I especially didn’t want to use them with Oogy. He had already spent more than enough time afraid. I didn’t have it in me to do that to him again.
If there was a downside to this, I never saw it, but there were visitors to our house who found the extent of license Oogy enjoyed somewhat disconcerting. He sat and slept wherever he wanted, and on more than one occasion, he climbed onto the dinner table while we were eating. This happened one memorable time when college friends were over. They looked at Oogy as if he were on fire, and then back and forth at one another, and though they didn’t say anything about it, I never heard from them again.
As he grew out of puppyhood, Oogy continued to have an appetite for mass destruction that would not abate for another year and a half. One morning when the boys were in seventh grade, he chewed a hole in Noah’s math homework. Jennifer wrote a note to the teacher that began, “You’re not going to believe this, but…” He tore apart insulated galoshes, flip-flops, scarves, sneakers, shoes, plastic fruit, and the head of one of Noah’s lacrosse sticks. He chewed up hard rubber dustpans, fly swatters, and brushes. He ate books, barrettes, and toothbrushes, shredded newspapers, ripped apart magazines, and tore chunks out of books. There is a sizable glop of glue on the rug in the dining room because Oogy chewed the top off a bottle of the stuff, and there appears to be no solvent to dissolve it that won’t also take the rug with it. I have no idea how he avoided doing major damage to himself with that one. He ripped open packages, tore apart mail, ate a whole tray of brownies, chewed into countless boxes of energy bars, and raided the trash relentlessly. He ate plastic figures of the Lone Ranger and Tonto that Dan gave Jennifer one year for her birthday.
One holiday season, a friend sent Oogy a package of doggy treats that she had made. The deliveryman put the package behind the front screen door and pulled up the porch mat so that passersby would not see it. The weight of the mat prevented Oogy from actually opening the screen door, but he was able to chew open the exposed corner of the box and clean out one whole container of treats. He also took a bite out of the card that accompanied the gifts; it showed a shamrock next to a cartoon image of a white dog with the words Lucky Dog on it. I photocopied that in color and sent the