Oogy_ The Dog Only a Family Could Love - Larry Levin [40]
I was warned that any dog was likely to go through the fence once and that once was usually enough to convince the dog not to repeat the experience. One day, not long after the fence had been installed and Oogy had been successfully trained, Noah and Dan were throwing around a lacrosse ball in the street. Oogy, of course, was having trouble with that arrangement. He was dashing back and forth on the lawn and barking. I could hear him, but I was not paying much attention. Suddenly, Dan was at the back door calling for me, and I was aware that the barking had stopped.
Oogy had gone through the fence to be with the boys.
He was sitting in the street, shivering, utterly stunned. He looked as if he had run into the side of a truck. I had to drive the car into the street to pick him up because he would not come back the way he had gone out. To this day, I have to drive him through the fence line whenever I want to take him for a walk. If I am carrying the collar in my hand and I get too close to the fence, when the buzzing sound starts, Oogy retreats.
Outside of the house, we regularly encountered negative reactions from people simply because Oogy was a pit bull who had evidently been involved in some sort of fighting adventure. These reactions were not based on the facts but clearly reflected prejudices based on all the negative things written about the breed. It was not unusual for people we encountered on walks to step out into the street so as not to have to get too close to him. Any number of times I tried to reassure them that he was very friendly, but his looks seemed to confirm their mental associations and frightened them.
On one walk that first spring, we passed by a party in progress at a neighbor’s house. A little boy was standing on the sidewalk with his dad. When Oogy started over to say hello, the dad asked, “Is that a pit bull?” When I answered that he was, the father very slowly picked up his son and walked backward into the house, keeping his eyes on us when he was not glancing back over his shoulder to see where he was going, and closed the door.
Another time, an elderly female neighbor had just exited her car as Oogy and I ambled by on one of our regular strolls. She asked, “What happened to your dog?” I told her that he had been used as bait for a fighting dog. “I hate pit bulls!” she said dismissively. And I was thinking, But you’re looking at one…
I still remember the look of revulsion and fear in the eyes of a woman we encountered at a local shopping center. Oogy and I had turned the corner from the parking lot to the sidewalk leading past a row of shops, and as soon as this woman saw us her eyes widened, she put both arms around her little boy and, before he knew what was happening, had dragged him inside the swinging doors of a store. Then, arms still around her son, she watched us through the glass facade as we passed. I gave her a big, friendly grin as we did so.
Not long after we had adopted Oogy, while I was taking him for a walk, we encountered two well-coiffed poodles with the total antithesis of Oogy’s tough-guy looks, and they started yapping at him. They sounded like Oogy on helium. When a dog barks at Oogy, he invariably looks at it as though it is a creature from another dimension. The only time Oogy will bark at a dog is if he cannot get to it to play, such as when we’re in the car and pass another dog walking by, or if he wants to play but the dog is ignoring him. I went to pull him away, but he slipped out of his collar and ran up to the poodles. Their owner panicked. While the only real danger that these poodles were in was that Oogy might accidentally step on one of them, this woman reacted as if her dogs were about to be tossed into a wood chipper. Her alarm, compounded by the yelping of her dogs, fed on itself and grew until I managed to grab Oogy, slip his collar back on, and drag him away.
The next day, a different neighbor passed me in the street.