Oogy_ The Dog Only a Family Could Love - Larry Levin [62]
I was talking to a nurse at the dog park and allowed that I was not sure I was ready for these encounters. She told me that I would quickly adjust. I have my doubts, but it made me feel better to defer to her expertise.
Before an animal receives certification as a therapy pet, he (or she) must undergo hours of obedience training, following which the dog is tested by the sponsoring organization (and in some cases the particular facility itself has more stringent standards) to prove that the candidate is calm and under his or her master’s control. There are simple sit and stay tests, tests for walking on command, and one that I anticipate will be hardest for Oogy: sitting while I walk away and not moving toward me until he hears the appropriate verbal command. Some of the tests are administered while rolling carts rattle, pans are dropped, glass breaks, or other dogs pass by. Ardmore recommended a man with decades of experience who is also the author of several well-received books on training dogs. He came to the house and we spent a number of hours together, much of it just talking about people-dog relationships.
He conceded that he had not anticipated the level of disfigurement on Oogy’s face. “I knew that his ear was missing,” he said, “but I never would have guessed that the damage to his facial structure was so extensive.”
We started the training with some game playing using a tennis ball on a knotted piece of rope. The trainer had me throw the ball and give Oogy a treat when he brought it back and gave it to me. The next two times I tried this on my own, Oogy quickly lost interest in anything but the treats in my shirt pocket and would simply stand there and stare at them. The trainer and I have not had a second session yet.
Before he left, though, the trainer said something that made me feel rewarded. He said that Oogy and I have a relationship based on mutual love and respect, a confidence that each will be there for the other. “You’re one hundred percent bonded with your dog,” he said. “There’s no distinction between this dog and the rest of your life. You’re in a place that we try to take dog owners to, but very few of them ever get to.”
I have never felt that my family did anything special or unusual in adopting Oogy. We just happened to be there when the opportunity presented itself. We didn’t do it so we could feel good about ourselves for having done it — although we have felt good about ourselves for being able to help him. We did it without thinking (well, Jennifer did the thinking for us). We met and fell completely and instantaneously in love with a dog who had had unimaginable horror inflicted upon him. We did it for the dog, a dog who was obviously special. What he had endured seemed to have put him on a different plane. And in our naïveté, we did not know that we might not be able to do what we did; that the odds were very much against allowing us to take an abused fighting dog and help him unlock the love in his heart for all living creatures.
I have heard it said that you can tell a lot about a person from his or her pet. I do not know what Oogy ends up saying about us. We do not operate on some elevated level of kindness. It is not uncommon to encounter dogs that have been adopted after they have been injured. I know several three-legged dogs from the dog parks: One was shot in a hunting accident; a car hit another; the third, a fighting dog, was found on the streets of Philadelphia with half his left rear leg missing and the bone jutting out. The owner of another dog who lost some facial structure to cancer had plastic surgery performed on it to restore his face and ability to eat properly. I know a Jack Russell terrier whose hind legs do not work: His owners place him in a little two-wheeled cart so that he can get around and call him “the million-dollar dog.” I know a family who found a stray who had cigarette burns all over her body and took her in; another family adopted a dog from a breeder who planned on killing him simply because he was a runt.