Oogy_ The Dog Only a Family Could Love - Larry Levin [57]
In response, the first thing I said to him was, “You’re a Dogo. The Dogo is a sturdy breed with a prominent black nose. I learned that tonight. You have a prominent black nose. Did you know that?”
His face was expressionless. He was looking for more information.
“You just missed it,” I told him. “You just missed the Ceremony of the Bones, when we place the baked bones into the freezer following the designs of an ancient ritual. Now, they are safely ensconced in the bowels of the freezer. However, I can tell you that later on tonight one very lucky dog will get at least one of the bones. After the Opening of the Freezer Door ritual. And,” I said, dropping my voice to barely a whisper, “confidentially, I have it on good authority that will be you.” I nodded at him, kissed him on the top of his skull, rubbed both sides of his head behind his ear and the unear, feeling the rough line of scar tissue that holds his face together.
“You’re a big baby dog,” I told him. I could see clearly the flap of flesh that had been his neck in the shadows playing on him, how it had been pulled forward and attached to what had remained of his face. “You’re a folded dog,” I said. “Do not fold, bend, spindle, or mutilate. Isn’t that how it goes?” He looked at me. His expression did not change. He stood perfectly still, tolerating my idiocy. And then I said, “Oops. Too late for you.”
I had no idea where these words were coming from, but I was sure he understood what lay behind them even if I did not. Just as I understand him. Because Oogy also talks to me.
Sometimes we are sitting together and I am reading or working on the laptop when he will start pawing and whining at me to notice him. There are times he will move off the couch where we are sitting together and start growling, demanding that I come to where he is and pay attention to him. “Do you want to go out?” I’ll ask him. “Do you want a bone? Do you want some attention? Come here.” Then he’ll bark at me. He wants me on his level. It’s that simple. So I will uncoil from the couch and lie down next to him, stroke him, and the murmurings cease; he has the attention he has asked me for.
As he has matured, Oogy’s ability to express his desire both for attention and for affection has evolved. I don’t really understand the source of his perception. It may be instinctual, a product of the years he and I have spent together emotionally committed to each other unclouded by the white noise — the relentless clatter and superficiality — that courses through the daily lives of human beings. Or it just may be that he comprehends much more speech than I give him credit for or can intuit signs from daily activities that I wouldn’t notice.
The first time this happened, he woke me at 6:00 on a Saturday morning. That evening, I would be going overseas for business. I had not taken out my suitcase or begun packing yet, so Oogy could not have had any apparent clue that I was going away. When I heard him come upstairs and he whined once and stuck that cold, wet nose in my face, I reacted by first asking him if he wanted to join me on the bed, hoping he wasn’t expecting me to go downstairs and let him out. I patted the mattress several times, but he made no move to join me. Instead, his hind legs danced sideways back and forth, and he continued to whine at me, never taking his eyes off my face. Then, resigned, I asked