Oogy_ The Dog Only a Family Could Love - Larry Levin [56]
The trainer then asked about Oogy’s daily routine. I started by taking her across the hall and showing her the crate where Oogy stayed when we left the house. I didn’t mention that Oogy resisted being put in the box, nor did I describe how he barked incessantly once he was confined. The trainer looked at the crate and without a moment’s hesitation turned to me and said, “You’ve got to get him out of that box.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because,” she said, “Oogy associates being in a crate with having his ear ripped off.”
It was a smack-myself-in-the-forehead moment. In my ignorance, I had attributed Oogy’s abhorrence of the crate to his frustration and anxiety at being separated from us. From that day on, Oogy never went back in the crate, which for him had represented a fundamental fear that he had had to confront on a daily basis. I felt awful that, even inadvertently, I had caused Oogy some fear. I should have known by his incessant barking that something was amiss, but I had not understood the reason. I had completely misjudged the level of distress this had caused him. The trainer’s intuitive grasp of this truth earned her my immediate respect and gratitude.
The experience with the trainer also had a wholly unintended and beneficial consequence for me. I began paying attention to how Oogy communicated not only with me, but with other people as well.
The pictures that suggest Oogy’s presence in our lives before he arrived, even the events that created a sense of inevitability that his life would be commingled with ours, are also a form of message. But on a daily basis, I pass messages to Oogy, both nonverbally and verbally, though not always in literal fashion, and he, in his own fashion, speaks to me.
There is some language-specific interaction. Although I was skeptical at first, I no longer doubt that Oogy understands certain specific words. For example, when I use the words dog park in a sentence, he gets very excited. I keep telling him that he can’t understand me when I say that, but his behavior contradicts this. It’s an association he has not with time of day (we go at different times) or with an action (like picking up the keys), but with the words I actually use.
There are also behavior-specific things I do that tell Oogy something. When I take off the collar for the invisible fence, he understands immediately that he is going somewhere. In the morning, when I put on my shoes, he knows that I am leaving and goes to his hiding spot underneath the dining room table as though he can somehow avoid the inevitable. His sadness is as palpable as a finger in my eye.
There are also times, even if I’m just talking nonsense to him, that he clearly grasps the feelings that my gibberish is meant to convey. The content is irrelevant; it is the emotions I’m sharing with him, through the tone of my voice or my affect, that speak to and comfort him.
For example, one Friday evening this past summer, while we were in the midst of an extended heat spell, I cooked Oogy some bones. This particular day had been over one hundred degrees. At ten in the evening, it was still steaming, the air thick with moisture. In the darkness outside, the sound of cicadas swelled and ebbed. Our house does not have central air-conditioning, and although the exterior walls are eighteen inches thick, the relative coolness the house can retain on the first floor had long since been baked out by the sustained pounding the heat had given us over the week. The boys were in the family room, where there is an air conditioner, watching TV. Oogy was sleeping on the floor next to them. Jennifer was out at the gym. And I was in the kitchen. I had ten small bones that I had baked for Oogy in the toaster oven and needed to put into the freezer. Oogy usually gets at least one bone each day. He prefers small bones; with his shattered jaw, he cannot grip large ones.
I put the bones into a bag and sealed it, and as I was placing the bag in the freezer, I saw Oogy standing in the entrance to the kitchen, staring at me. There was no light