| CHAPTER | |
Surprises |
since it would be good for Oogy’s health to be able to run around in the yard and would keep him from chasing after people in the street, we decided to have a new electronic fence installed. The one in place when we had moved in had long since corroded into dust. The first company I called asked me what Oogy’s breed was. When I told the agent with whom I was dealing that Oogy was a pit bull, she told me that her company would not install an electronic fence. It was their policy; they were afraid that if a pit bull got through one of their fences and attacked someone, they might be sued. The second company I called said that his breed would not be a problem.
An electronic fence is set up by inserting wire around the perimeter of the property, which is then marked by a series of small plastic flags. A charge runs along the wire controlled by a box attached to the house. Two conductive electrodes in a special collar rest against the dog’s neck. If he gets too close to the fence, he will hear a buzzing sound intended to warn him away; if he continues, he will receive a shock. I had to know what the experience felt like, so I held the collar in my hand and walked to the fence. It was as though I had stuck my finger into a live lamp socket.
Once the fence had been installed, it was time to train Oogy. I was shown how to lead him up to it until he heard the buzzing sound, the warning that he was approaching the perimeter. The first time we did this, Oogy did not know that there was any significance to the sound, and I had to let him get shocked. The idea was that he would associate the warning sound with getting a jolt of electricity. After that first experience, I repeatedly led Oogy up toward the fence until he heard the cautionary sound, then immediately pulled him back and away from the fence line so that he learned to associate the sound with the limits of his domain.
However, I encountered an unexpected problem with training Oogy. Because he has only one ear, he cannot triangulate sound. As a result, he appeared to be confused about where the warning sound was coming from. It seemed likely to me that because he could not tell where the sound was coming from, it might not act as a deterrent for him; that he might go forward when he heard the warning sound, not back away. Since I did not want to subject him to repeated shocks, I called the company that had installed the fence and explained my concern. They sent over a technician who assessed the situation and suggested that I sight-train Oogy. I would pull him up close to the fence line and wave one of the little blue flags when the warning sounded and then pull him back. As smart as he was, Oogy made the connection and visually learned the limits of the yard in short order.
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. “I hear your dog went after the poodles,” she said.
That was the owner’s story, and she was sticking to it.
Walking with Oogy in the early days was like strolling with a mayoral candidate. He wanted to meet everyone he saw on the street. He would pull me like a small tractor to go over to the person, and if I would not cooperate, he would lie down in the street and refuse to go anywhere until the object of his attention had disappeared or, as usually happened, I relented and allowed him to go meet the person.
As the months passed, people from the neighborhood who were afraid of Oogy always changed their minds about him once they actually got to meet him and experienced his gentle, affectionate nature. It was not that people’s fear of Oogy was illogical or unreasonable. His face was frightening, and none of these people had any way of knowing that his barking was not designed to scare them. On the contrary, he barked and paced to tell them he was frustrated because he could not meet them. Unfortunately, none of these people were conversant in Dog.
One evening several months after Oogy had joined our family, he and I were out for a stroll when we saw a young woman approaching us. She was power-walking and talking into a headset at the same time. As she drew closer, I heard her say, “Ma, here’s the dog I told you about, the one I’m afraid of?” I stopped. Oogy stood and looked at her. His tail wagged slowly back and forth. She approached us cautiously.
I said to the woman as she drew nearer, “It’s okay. He’s perfectly safe. I wouldn’t be keeping him here in front of you if that wasn’t the case.”
After a brief hesitation, the woman came over to Oogy. She held out one hand, and he sniffed it. Then he licked her.
“I am so afraid of your dog,” she said, “that I stopped jogging by your house.”
“There’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of,” I assured her. “He only barks at you because he wants contact with you.”
“He seems very nice,” she admitted, nodding.
“He’s more than very nice,” I told her.
She cupped her hand under Oogy’s muzzle. Then she knelt and, fascinated by the texture of his fur, began to stroke his head and shoulders. Oogy lifted his head and licked her face. She asked me what had happened to him, and I told her. By the time the encounter was over, the woman was kissing Oogy on the top of his head and massaging the muscles in his neck while he backed into her in appreciation.
Similar encounters happened on several occasions, and people’s hesitancy if not fear dissolved once they actually met Oogy.
There have also been times when we have been able to use Oogy’s intimidating appearance and apparently aggressive behavior to our advantage. Whenever there were strangers working in the neighborhood, I made it a point to let Oogy out of the house. “If someone is thinking of coming into our house,” I assured the boys when they were younger, “once they take a look at Oogy and hear him barking, they’re going to start thinking about looking for another house.” Once Oogy had joined the family, the boys lost any lingering sense of discomfort they might have had about being alone.
While, thankfully, I’ve never had occasion to test this theory, I have always felt that if Oogy sensed we were afraid or if he perceived some threat, he would immediately transform himself into a completely different animal from the one we have encountered in his life so far. Out and about or in the house, in the blackest of the night, I have never had any fear that someone will physically threaten us or do us harm. In my heart, there has been no doubt that the dog we adore and who kisses us incessantly could and would react instantly to protect us at all costs—that he would die for us rather than let us feel threatened or allow us to be hurt. Oogy is a guardian who, I am convinced, will do whatever needs to be done to save us from peril.
One summer day, we came into the house and discovered that a window and screen were wide open in the family room. Nothing had been taken or moved. None of us would have had any reason to open the screen, but just to make sure, I asked the boys if they had done it. They told me that they had not, and we concluded that someone had decided to force his way into the house through the window, had heard and/or seen Oogy, and within seconds had realized that he had had better ideas in his life. The sight of an eighty-five-pound dog with half a face barking and rushing to the window, the sound of his growling reverberating in the room, had to have been a sobering experience.
True to Diane’s word, six months after we had welcomed Oogy into our home, we received notification from Ardmore that it was time for his first scheduled checkup. I made an appointment, and no sooner had I walked in the door with Oogy than Karen, the technician sitting at the front desk in the reception area, took a look at him and, after a sharp intake of breath, blurted out, “That’s a Dogo!”
Karen started to laugh. “I’m not sure,” she said.
Not yet a year old and still growing, Oogy already weighed seventy pounds. He stood a little over two feet high at the shoulder and was about four feet from nose to tail. When he stretched out, the way he would to greet someone by placing his front paws on their shoulders, he was over five feet long. He had already far surpassed what we had been told his adult weight would be. The significance of this was that Oogy had to have been younger than the four months we were told he was when we adopted him. His estimated age at the time had been based upon his weight—thirty pounds—compared with what his weight was supposed to be when he was fully grown—fifty-five pounds. The fact that he was still growing, and that he was already twenty pounds heavier than the estimate given by Dr. Bianco for his weight as a grown dog, meant that he had to have been younger when we met him. Oogy may have been no more than two months old when used as bait.
When I look back at it now, I realize that Oogy’s size should perhaps have tipped us off that he was not a pit bull; but it is hard to be objective and make a determination about a dog’s breed based on a visual assessment of his size and weight when you have been told by someone who should know that the pup in your arms is a specific breed—especially when the actual breed is something that you, a dog lover, know nothing about. And, just as with a child, when you see a dog every day, the extent of his growth is so incremental that you can’t fully grasp or appreciate the process or the end result. Besides, Oogy looked like a pit bull—or, more accurately, a pit bull on steroids.
At this first checkup, Dr. Bianco examined and ran standard tests on Oogy and pronounced him to be in perfect health. Oogy also had his toenails clipped (Dogos’ toenails grow unusually quickly). The first few times the staff clipped Oogy’s nails, they muzzled him; then Diane realized that if one technician stroked him while the other worked on him, there would be no problems. Dr. Bianco gave me drops for the itching in the gash that had been Oogy’s left ear, which he pawed at constantly; it was repeatedly subject to yeast infections. Dr. Bianco recommended certain vitamin supplements, which Oogy has had every day since. Dr. Bianco also suggested an over-the-counter wetting solution for Oogy’s left eye. Distorted by scar tissue, the eye could not fully close when Oogy slept, and as a result, it could not self-lubricate. Ever since then, Oogy and I have used the same eye lubricant, as I, too, have “dry eye” syndrome. Dr. Bianco then asked that we arrange to come back so that he could put a microchip in Oogy’s neck. That way, if Oogy ever ran away and was picked up, he could be returned to us. Finally, Dr. Bianco told me to get rid of the retractable leash. Just the week before, he had had two clients whose dogs ran into the street before the locking mechanisms could be engaged, and both had been hit by cars. A dog as big and powerful as Oogy could easily present a similar problem, and he might even be able to break the restraint.
On the way home, I bought a different kind of leash.
After Dr. Bianco had concluded the examination, I went to the reception desk and took out my credit card, but Karen shook her head in the negative.
She said, “Oogy’s a no-pay.”
I asked, “What’s a ‘no-pay’?”
She explained, “That means you don’t pay for any of Oogy’s medical treatment here. Ever.”
I was stunned. I had never asked for special treatment, and I certainly hadn’t expected it. They had saved Oogy’s life and entrusted that life to us. And in our separate ways, all of us have contributed to his welfare as best we can. In all the years that have passed since we adopted Oogy, Ardmore Animal Hospital has never charged a dime for anything they have done or provided for Oogy—and multiple surgeries, medicines, and checkups were all required at different periods throughout Oogy’s life to maintain his health.
This speaks volumes both about the special nature of the people at the hospital and about Oogy himself. Years later, Diane revealed that she had made the decision that day not to charge for Oogy’s care. To begin with, she loved Oogy so much and thought his story so triumphant, she had been gratified that we also had immediately appreciated his special nature and had accepted him into our home without qualification and despite his horrific appearance. Then, when we brought him back and she saw how he was thriving in the environment we had created for him, she was thrilled for him and felt vindicated for all the effort that had gone into saving him. We were fulfilling the promise she had initiated, to cherish and care for this special animal. He had been worth it after all.
As soon as I got home that morning, I went online to research Dogos.
The breed is actually called Dogo Argentino. The first picture I saw of a Dogo looked exactly like Oogy. I stared at it in wonderment, looked away to Oogy sleeping on the floor beside me, then back at the picture on the screen. I began to scroll down the page. Because there is mastiff in the breed—the Dogo is also known as the Argentine mastiff—many of the other Dogos I saw in photographs had broader, rounder foreheads than Oogy’s, but his appearance is generally typical.
The Dogo was developed in the 1920s to be a pack hunter and guardian who could be trusted with a family. Dogos are bred to hunt puma (which damage livestock) and boar (which devastate crops), both of which were ravaging farms in Argentina because the farmers and landowners could not stop them or bring them under control. The Dogo is derived from a now extinct breed, the Dog of Cordoba, a fighting dog, and includes traits of the Great Dane (for size), boxer (liveliness and gentleness), Spanish mastiff (power), bulldog (ample chest and boldness), bull terrier (fearlessness), Great Pyrenees (white coat to deflect heat), pointer (sense of smell), Irish wolfhound (endurance and hunting instinct), and Dogue de Bordeaux (powerful jaws).
Adult Dogos typically weigh between one hundred and one hundred ten pounds. Because Oogy was mistreated in his first few months, however, he is comparatively small, weighing in at eighty-five pounds. Given Oogy’s strength and power at eighty-five pounds, I can’t imagine trying to take him for a walk if he weighed a hundred and ten.
A Dogo’s temperament is a fascinating combination of ferocity and gentle devotion to his family. They are unrelenting and fearless hunters—and I do not mean a hunter like a pointer or a retriever, I mean a hunter as in a killing machine. The muscle structure of the Dogo is simply massive, and the breed has tremendous stamina. They can track their prey at a gallop over great distances and are capable of incredible bursts of speed. They are bred to corner and hold their quarry, but they are also capable of killing their prey if it attempts to attack them or break out.
At the same time, the breed is known for being extremely loyal and affectionate with their families and to crave attention from their owners. They are wonderfully tolerant of children. Protective, they will guard their territory against any intruder not welcomed by the family. In Argentina, there is a saying: “A Dogo does not sit at your feet, it sits on your feet.” Conversely, the Dogo accepts without limitation people welcomed by the family. I learned that in addition to their valuable roles as hunting dogs, Dogos are often used for police and military work, in narcotics detection, for tracking, and in search and rescue. Dogos also make excellent guide dogs for the blind.
Dogos are not naturally aggressive with other dogs; aggressiveness was bred out of them, since they could not function as pack hunters if they were constantly trying to establish dominance. Oogy’s lack of aggression has occasionally encouraged other dogs to attack him. He has been intentionally bloodied on half a dozen occasions by other dogs. Oogy will not tolerate another dog trying to assert dominance and will defend himself, but as soon as the other dog is pulled away, Oogy loses any interest in fighting. However, because of the Dogo’s ferociousness in combat, they are routinely fought in South America, and the breed is one of four that has been outlawed in the United Kingdom. Some owners crop their ears because it makes the Dogo look more combative. Also, when a Dogo is hunting or fighting, cropped ears offer less of a target to the beast he has engaged. It is not simply coincidence that the dog that tore up Oogy ripped off one of his ears. A floppy or large ear is a target.
The Dogo is not commonly found in the United States. Few people I have met have even heard of the breed, let alone have been able to recognize one. I’m sure that a number of reasons would explain the “exotic” nature of the breed in this country, not least of which is the fact that a Dogo can typically cost thousands of dollars.
I once asked Dr. Bianco why he had thought Oogy was a pit bull. “Nobody ever sees Dogos here,” he explained. “In all my years as a vet, I’ve only ever treated one other Dogo. So I was not thinking of the breed. It never entered my mind at the time that this dog might be a Dogo. He looked like just another pit bull to me.”
When Oogy runs—actually, it is more like leaping than running—he thrusts himself forward in great bounds, all four legs in the air simultaneously like a greyhound. He can approach a top speed of almost thirty miles an hour—I once checked the speedometer to see how fast I was going as he raced alongside my car while he was still in the yard. His hind leg muscles are like coiled springs; they are so strong that when he sits and the muscles bunch, his butt does not touch the ground. He has a neck like a fireplug to protect him when he closes with his prey, with accordionlike folds of flesh bunched at the back of his head. A long rib cage curves back from a barrel chest to a whippetlike waist. Viewed from the front, Oogy’s broad chest is shaped like a box, and from the side, his body shape appears rectangular in the chest, then narrows as it recedes to his rump. He has thin black eyebrows, fine white eyelashes, and eyes that appear bloodshot, part of his Great Dane heritage.
There are numerous black splotches under Oogy’s short white fur, like those of a Dalmatian only much less pronounced, more like shadows of spots than spots. He looks as though a couple of paintbrushes had been shaken off all over him. One thing I really dreaded was telling Oogy that his career plans might not be as unlimited as he hoped. After reading about Dogos, I had to break the news to him that he could never be a show dog. “You’ve got too many spots,” I told him. “From what I’ve read, to be a show Dogo you can’t have more than one spot.” I did not want him engaging in flights of fancy that he could never realize. I didn’t want to encourage unrealistic goals in him. I thought he might take it hard, but he handled it with his usual aplomb.
A doctor who was present at Ardmore when I related this to him laughed and responded, “I don’t think that’s Oogy’s big hurdle in terms of becoming a show dog.”
When Oogy came to live with us, I assumed that with his short white fur there would be little shedding. I could not have been more wrong. There is Oogy hair over everything we own. In the cars, it looks like a dusting of some strange powder. Every week I have to rub him down with a hard rubber currycomb of the kind that is used for horses.
Reflecting the traits of his breed, Oogy loves hot weather. In the summer, he will lie in the driveway, soaking in the heat for hours at a time. When he comes inside afterward, he feels as warm to the touch as if he’s been in a toaster oven. He enjoys the snow, but he hates the feel of rain on his skin and will not voluntarily go out in it. Sometimes I will drag him out into the yard in the rain, hoping he will do his business, but he will just trot around the house to get back inside as soon as he can. During extended rainy periods, it is not unusual for Oogy to leave us a gift, ordinarily in some out-of-the-way location such as the basement or up in the weight room.
Watching Oogy interact with other dogs is fascinating once you know something about his breeding. His bulk and speed, the way he thunders across the grass with his powerful strides, make me think of a Percheron or Clydesdale running among other horses—if he were any heavier, the ground would shake. There are faster dogs than Oogy, there are heavier and more graceful dogs, but none are more powerful. He is a marvel of genetic engineering. He is designed to run relentlessly, and that is what he loves to do. He does not go after sticks and he does not go after balls, and dogs that want to do nothing else frustrate him. He wants to run and he wants to wrestle. And when he is running with another dog or other dogs, he never takes the lead. He always runs alongside the lead dog, just at or behind his front shoulder, and sometimes he’ll give the other dog a slight chest bump. He never tries to knock the other dog over, but something in his genetics compels him to make some contact. He will run until he is exhausted, collapse for a few minutes, and then be ready to run again.
Knowing the attributes of Oogy’s breed went a long way toward helping us understand his behavior and the nuances that were expressive of his character.
We’re used to coming home and finding Oogy asleep on the table in the kitchen or in the dining room. He likes to sit on the picnic tables at the dog park as well. I attribute that to the hunter in him. It seems logical that he would like to be up high to look for game. To give Oogy his due, there have been no jaguars or mountain lions in our yard since he came home with us. (Boars were never really much of a problem anyway.)
Oogy’s hunting senses allow him to be aware of another animal long before I can see it, and often I never do. I have learned that when we are out at night and he stops in his tracks and peers into some bushes or down a dark driveway, if he stands there completely still and concentrating, his ear up, looking across a field, another creature is definitely there, although in all likelihood I will never know what it is. Sometimes he drops his head and stares, motionless, alerted to another presence out there, trying to determine what it is, as though he is more likely to sense it rather than see it, his whole being telling him something I cannot know.
During his first couple of years with us, whenever we were out for a stroll Oogy would try to go after every squirrel or rabbit that caught his eye. This behavior was so common that once, when someone asked me where his name came from, I replied, “It’s Elvish for ‘squirrel’s bane.’ ” He never did catch anything. The breeding leaves him relentless, though. There are some chipmunks that live in the foundation of our patio. On a number of occasions, Oogy has stood out there and barked at them incessantly. Passersby would see a dog barking his fool head off at masonry. Oogy does not seem to care, no matter how many times I remind him that this behavior makes him look rather silly.
One of my favorite things to do, though I don’t get to do it nearly as much as I would like, is to stretch out on the couch, enjoying the luxury of free time, and have Oogy stretch out next to me. He will put his head in the crook of my arm or rest it on my shoulder, and I marvel every time at his regular and relaxed deep breathing. Just to feel the rhythmic beating of his heart is encouraging. I will routinely talk to him about different things. On more than one occasion, I have asked him what he would have been like if he had both ears. Would his personality or demeanor have been different? Would he love me just as much? Oogy will invariably look at me a moment, then turn his head away with the foolishness of the question, upon which he has so far refused to speculate.
“Do you talk to other Dogos?” I once asked him. “Can you somehow communicate telepathically? Is there a psychic Dogo connection because you are all so unique? If so, tell them you’re loved. Tell them that it worked out okay for you. Tell them,” I said, “that we love you like there’s no tomorrow.”
