Oogy

we wanted to get the boys something unique for high school graduation gifts and were lucky enough to find hand-carved sculptures that the artist calls Journey Boats. The Journey Boats are symbols intended to represent exploration and passage.

The boats themselves are the long, flat-bottomed type the pharaohs used for hunting the marshes, an experience they considered to be sacred in nature. On the prow of each boat, a protective eye guides.

Based on photographs we supplied to the artist, she carved likenesses of both boys and Oogy in each of the boats. In Noah’s boat, he wears a red shirt; Dan, wearing a blue shirt, sits behind him with his right hand on Noah’s shoulder. These positions are reversed in Dan’s boat. They are looking confidently ahead, ready for whatever it is they are going to encounter. They have always covered each other’s back, so their positioning and the supportive hands on each other’s shoulder represents that. While they are about to embark on separate explorations, their steadfastness and physical contact have an additional meaning: We know that because of the special bonds they have with each other, they will make the journeys loving and supporting each other along the way.

While the boats have similarities, as do the boys’ lives, there are also differences that distinguish them from each other. The boats are different colors. The prow of one is adorned with a dove, which is both the bird that Noah let out of the Ark to find land and a symbol of peace, representing our hope that there will be peace for the boys throughout their respective journeys. On the prow of the other is a bee, the symbol of hard work and achievement; they have both been long aware of the necessary connection between the two.

An observation by Graham Greene is carved on the bottom of each boat: “There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.”

Oogy has been and always will be an important and integral part of their lives, and thus their journeys, and they have always been appreciative of the unique and exceptional experience of having him in their lives. The love they have shared has not only been its own reward, Oogy’s love for the boys has always been as meaningful to them as their love for him has been important to him. As a result, Oogy sits in each boy’s boat; he will be with them forever. He sits in front of them, his right ear alert, staring ahead just as they do because, without fear, he is watching out for them, just as he always has and just as he always will.

Behind him, the boys are also watching over him. Just as they always have. Just as they always will.

Jennifer and I made a conscious decision not to include ourselves in the boats. The boats are intended to symbolize the boys’ explorations that are starting now that they have graduated high school. Everything that has happened before has simply led them to this point. Jennifer and I have brought them here and pushed them into the current that will take them into the rest of their lives. When Noah and Dan turn around, they will see us standing on the shore, growing smaller and smaller, waving and waving good-bye.

The only night in the last six and a half years that Oogy did not sleep with the boys was the night before each left for college. Dan left a week before Noah, and the night before Dan left, Oogy slept alone in Dan’s room, on the clothes Dan had laid out on his bed to be packed in the morning for school. The same thing happened the night before Noah left: Oogy slept alone in Noah’s room on the clothes he was going to pack for college.

He knew, somehow, that something out of the ordinary was occurring. At first I thought that he was trying to absorb the boys’ scents so that he would have something to remember them by. Then it occurred to me that maybe Oogy might instead be leaving his scent to tell other dogs that the humans wearing these clothes were his. That they were already spoken for. He was imprinting their clothing as he had imprinted himself upon our lives.

During one visit to the first park Oogy and I frequented, we emerged from the trees into the parking lot by the creek to see two young men seated on the flatbed of a truck from which a small bulldozer had been off-loaded to clean up the busted glass, old tires, pieces of masonry, and other debris strewn about. They were wearing jeans, work boots, and orange T-shirts of the company they worked for. The one in charge was built like a fireplug. He had the sleeves of his T-shirt cut off; his arms were fully covered with multi-colored tattoos. A black bandana held back his long, dark hair and he sported thick hoop earrings a thick layer of stubble on his jaw. In another time he could have been a pirate.

He said, “Hello, pup. What’s your name?” I told him and, as there was no threat, unclipped the leash so that Oogy could wander. The tattooed man asked what had happened, and when I told him the story, which included what Oogy had been bred for, he remarked, “Oh, he’s a Dogo.”

I told him that he was one of fewer than a half-dozen people I had met who had recognized the breed. We talked a few minutes longer, and then I told him Oogy and I had to leave, as I needed to get home to start dinner and to help with homework. At that, the man jumped off the flatbed where he had been sitting and walked over to Oogy. He went down on his knees and took Oogy’s face in his hands. He ran his hands over Oogy’s face and smoothed back his ear. He rubbed his right thumb over the scar.

Then he nodded slowly, looked into Oogy’s eyes, and said, “You made it, dude.”

And he had.