Oogy The Dog Only a Family Could Love

by Larry Levin

  Once Oogy had come to live with us, it took no time at all for the scarring to become simply part of who he was; but seeing it through other people’s eyes was unavoidable. Those who caught only a glimpse of Oogy often had a difficult time accepting what their eyes told them they were seeing. One side of Oogy’s profile looked perfectly normal: a sweet, white dog face, a large, black nose, a floppy ear; the other side looked positively grotesque, with a nub of an ear, textured scar tissue instead of white fur, and an exposed upper canine. Often, people could do nothing more than stare at him in astonishment — and sometimes in horror — as we passed quickly away, leaving them to try to assimilate what they had just seen. Sometimes I would see the person who had caught sight of Oogy gesturing wildly to get the attention of others around him or her to have a look at “the creature” while we were still there.

  And I would leave them behind, secure in the knowledge of the loveliness beside me.

  But in addition to the deformities the scarring had caused, none of which should have presented any substantive health issues, it turned out that the spreading scar tissue had created a very real problem, one that I never would have detected on my own because of Oogy’s ability to tolerate extraordinary levels of pain. When Oogy was about two years old and had stopped growing, during one of his routine checkups Dr. Bianco informed me that Oogy was in chronic pain because the scar tissue had deformed his facial muscles. He explained that given Oogy’s genetic composition, he had not and would never have let on that he was suffering the kind of acute torment he was undergoing on an unrelenting basis. “Imagine that someone has grabbed you by your face and is pulling on it, twisting it out of shape,” Dr. Bianco said, seizing the skin of his face just below his cheekbone and yanking it upward with both hands to illustrate. “The pain may be bearable, but at best it is very, very uncomfortable.”

  Dr. Bianco asked me to let him rebuild Oogy’s face. He informed me he had never before performed facial reconstructive surgery to the extent Oogy needed it, but at the same time, he had every confidence in his ability to successfully complete the procedure. Although the scope of damage and deformity presented a great challenge, Dr. Bianco assured me that when the procedure had been completed, Oogy’s life would be better than it currently was. Dr. Bianco also promised me that when he was done, Oogy would be the “Brad Pitt of dogdom.”

  Our confidence in Dr. Bianco’s surgical skills was such that we had no doubt of the outcome — the operation would be a complete success. I think one reason we felt this way was that we knew the surgery was something Dr. Bianco wanted to do for Oogy’s well-being.

  In what turned out to be a three-and-a-half-hour operation, Dr. Bianco first removed all the scar tissue down to the muscle. Later, he told me that after all the scar tissue was taken out, there was a hole in Oogy’s head the size of a softball. He held up a closed fist to give me some idea of the extent. Next, Dr. Bianco took off the remaining stump of an ear and all the skin surrounding it that had become embedded with scar tissue. He undermined the skin — removed its attachment to the underlying muscle — in order to allow it to reattach naturally instead of by adhering to the scar tissue. Dr. Bianco then pulled up a flap of skin from Oogy’s neck and joined it to the fur on the back of his muzzle with skin grafts he removed from the insides of his front legs. During this part of the surgery, Dr. Bianco’s chief concern was that there might not be enough skin to complete the reconstructive process, but there was. Next, because covering a natural opening might lead to problems with postoperative draining, Dr. Bianco located the spot where Oogy’s left ear had been and made a small hole in the side of Oogy’s cranium. He then created an artificial horizontal canal into Oogy’s skull from the little hole that was now all that was left of Oogy’s ear. This would help avoid infection postsurgery. Dr. Bianco did not bother to replicate the vertical canal that had been torn out when Oogy had been attacked, since Oogy would never be able to hear from this ear no matter what.

  The day after the surgery, I was allowed to visit Oogy in the hospital portion of the building. This was a special privilege I was given only because the patient was Oogy. The left side of Oogy’s face was swollen and distorted, and he appeared bruised, as though he had been beaten. A black line of fine stitches ran down the left side of his face, which had been shaved down to his baby pink skin; a second, horizontal line of stitches helped stabilize the flaps of flesh that had been joined. There were blue gauze wraps on his forelegs, protecting the spots where the skin had been removed for the grafts. There was a Penrose drain in his head that ran from the upper left quadrant of his skull and came out the underside of his jaw. Blood and some clear, viscous fluid continually seeped out of the bottom of the drain. He looked more forlorn than any dog should ever have to be. He slept in the largest cage the hospital had, but it was still a cage, and I knew it created anxiety for him. Yet the accommodations were unavoidable, and although before the operation I could not have envisioned what he would look like, the surgery clearly had proved to be a complete success. He no longer looked terrifying (I’m not sure a dog with one ear can ever be described as normal-looking), but more important, the fact that the pressure that had been exerted by the expanded scar tissue was now eliminated meant he would finally be able to go through his days without chronic pain. We had to look at “the big picture,” and although I felt bad for Oogy in that moment, I knew that the experience would have no permanently negative effect on his disposition.

  I was allowed to visit him every day, and each day he grew stronger. He wore an E-collar, a clear plastic protective device that radiated outward from his neck. (Its name is derived from the ruffs Elizabethan men sported atop their tunics.) This was to prevent Oogy from scratching, biting, and licking at the sutures. It made Oogy look like a 1950s-style space doggy. I would let him out of his cage and spend as much time as I could spare sitting on the floor next to him, trying to stay out of the way of the staff as they performed their duties. Oogy would curl up next to me while I read a book or magazine with one hand and stroked him gently with the other; it was the best I could do to try to encourage and to calm him. The fact that he was sedated with painkillers no doubt helped to reduce the stress that resulted from being away from us, from having to sleep in a steel box, and from the demands of the surgery itself. Although I could see in his face and read in his body language that he was miserable, he never indicated any anxiety or discomfort.

  He trusted us. All of us.

  Once he was allowed to come home, Oogy still had to wear the E-collar. In almost comical fashion, he walked into doorjambs with it and banged it on walls or against cabinets, eventually cracking it into pieces. I replaced it with a somewhat smaller one so that he would have less trouble navigating the house. We removed the E-collar when Oogy ate, and after several days, we would remove the collar when we were sitting with him. This allowed him to feel more comfortable, and if he started to scratch or lick his stitches, we could stop him and put the collar back on. Before we went to sleep, we would put it on him for the night.

  Ten days after the surgery, Ardmore removed the stitches. The white fur was growing back.

  Oogy’s face is an unavoidable, constant reminder of what he has had to endure. His face is what he has had to endure. Now there is a small black hole where Oogy’s left ear used to be. On the right side of his head, the undamaged side, his coat is feathered behind the ear. On the left side, however, where the skin of his neck has been pulled forward, the feathering is just behind his eye and in front of where the ear would be if he had one. Instead of being smooth and seamless, the line of feathering on his left side is ragged and slightly raised, like an aerial photograph of sea foam washing up on a shoreline. This is actually the line that represents where the two parts of Oogy’s face were sewn together. It runs from the top of his skull to the underside of his jaw. Because part of his jawbone had been broken off, removing support for Oogy’s facial structure, the shape of his face shifted as he grew. In addition, the flesh and
muscle on that side of his forehead atrophied from lack of blood flow, gradually causing the left side of the top of Oogy’s skull to slope downward, whereas the left side of his face has been pulled slightly upward from the surgeries. As a result, he appears lopsided. His right upper jowl hangs below his lower jaw in normal fashion, but his left one does not; his left eye is not parallel to his right eye but is slightly higher on his face and somewhat larger. The left side of his large black nose angles upward while the right side does not. Viewed straight on, he looks like a portrait that has been torn in half but not quite properly aligned before being taped back together. This misshapen visage has also given him what one woman described as “a permanent smile.” It’s there, especially from the front, a slight turnup at the corner of his mouth, as though he is hearing some subtle, wry joke to which no one else is privy. The flesh where his muzzle and neck have been joined feels slightly corrugated.

  Because a piece of his jaw is missing, there is not enough bone for his lower lip, a piece of which hangs down like a tiny valance. As a result of the ever-present moisture from inside his mouth, this part of his lip collects all kinds of dust, food, and other detritus that dries into a stiff paste. We routinely remove the gook that collects on the part of his lip where it hangs down. It is as natural to us as petting him. I have told the boys that when they are older, they will recall these reflexive, habitual acts of kindness with great fondness. It is the kind of unique act of loving intimacy that helps forge the connection and the bond. Oogy hates the sensation of having his lip cleaned because we literally have to pull the muck off of him like adhesive tape, but he seems to appreciate the fact that we are willing to do so.

  Early one evening during the summer of the year that Oogy’s face was rebuilt, he came hobbling into the house from one of his routine forays out in the yard. He could not put any weight at all on his right rear leg. It was drawn up tight, almost as though it had been suddenly compressed. He hobbled in on the other three and made it as far as the hallway, where he collapsed. All that he could manage to do was lie there, panting. He did not moan or whimper or otherwise vocalize, but his inability to put any weight on his leg was a testament to the pain he was in. He even coughed up some yellow bile. I had some sedatives left over from the prior surgery. I fed him a dose in a piece of meat, and although he would not eat anything more, this helped him to sleep.

  That night, I slept on the floor next to him. I knew that if I didn’t, he would risk further injury by climbing up the stairs to be with me, since the boys were away at camp. As much as I was trying to protect him from hurting himself, I was also doing it to make myself feel better, because there was nothing more that I could do for him. I had no pain medicine to give him. As early as I could get Dr. Bianco to see him, I picked Oogy up and carried him to the van, then shot over to the hospital. Ordinarily, Oogy would start whining and yelping when he got within six blocks of the hospital. This time, he lay curled on the floor for the entire trip.

  Once we arrived at the hospital, I lifted him out of the van and lugged him up the steps. Inside, he lay on the floor at my feet, panting. When Dr. Bianco appeared, two of the technicians carried Oogy into one of the examination rooms. Dr. Bianco did some manipulations with the leg. “It’s a torn ACL,” he informed me.

  “A torn what?” I asked.

  “Ligament — his anterior cruciate ligament, or what’s generally called the ACL,” he explained. “He tore it.”

  “How’d he do that?” I wondered.

  “Who knows? He could have been running in your yard and stepped in a hole. It’s going to have to be surgically repaired.”

  “Can you fix it?” I asked.

  “No,” Dr. Bianco said. “Unfortunately, compared to the type of surgery Oogy needs, what I do is remove warts.”

  Dr. Bianco recommended a hospital some forty minutes away where a specialist performed ACL reconstructive surgery. “With smaller dogs they can actually replace the ACL with fishing line,” he explained. “But given the muscles in Oogy’s leg, this is going to require special surgery. This guy is not cheap, but he’s the best there is. It doesn’t pay to take any chances, especially with a dog as massive and as special as this one.”

  It was enough for me that Dr. Bianco had recommended this surgeon as the best option under the circumstances. There was never a question that he always had Oogy’s best interests at heart.

  “How much is it going to cost?” I asked. “Do you have any idea?”

  “I’m not sure. Probably around fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars.”

  I called the hospital and made an appointment. Oogy was evaluated that same afternoon and scheduled for surgery on the next day. When I met with the surgeon, he exchanged no pleasantries or small talk with me. He appeared to exhibit no interest in the animal before him. He explained how he would saw down the bones and then use steel plates that would be screwed into the bones to hold them together. He showed me the X-rays of Oogy’s leg and drawings of what the procedure would involve. The actual cost of the surgery was almost double what Dr. Bianco had anticipated. On the drive home, I battled the feeling that I had failed Oogy. I had told him that I would do everything in my power not to let anything bad happen to him again. While I had known that such a pledge would be difficult to uphold, it had never occurred to me that it might be impossible.

  Late in the afternoon of the next day, the surgeon called to let me know everything had gone well. The hospital kept Oogy another two days for observation. After twenty-four hours, however, I was allowed to come for a short visit. I went into one of the examination rooms, and after a few minutes Oogy came hobbling out, wearing another E-collar. I sat next to him on the floor — I always feel more comfortable in such moments if I am on his level — and he put his head in my lap. I fought back tears, I felt so bad for him. It just seemed never to end. A jagged pink scar ran several inches down the outside of his right leg, held together by a number of tiny black stitches. I wanted Oogy to think of better things; I wanted to soothe him. I tried to think of songs, but I forgot the words to everything. Then I started to softly speak some of the words of a poem that inexplicably popped into my head, one an old friend had recited to win a contest back in sixth grade. It was rhythmic, and though I could remember only the first of the verses, as I started to speak, Oogy’s tail began to wag. I repeated the lines several times. Maybe it was simply the tone of my voice, but it really seemed to relax him.

  I hated the drive home that afternoon.

  When I returned to pick him up the next day, I was told to keep him sedated and give him some painkillers for the next week. The surgeon also told me that Oogy was allowed very limited exercise, several walks a day in the yard and always on a leash. There was to be no running, jumping, or climbing, and I was to confine him in the house to a six-foot-by-ten-foot room for the next two to three months.

  “There’s no way that’ll happen,” I told the doctor. “He’ll shred the door.”

  “Well,” the doctor said, “do the best you can.”

  I set Oogy up in the dining room. The sun streamed through the glass wall, which made the room nice and warm, just the way he liked it. His favorite chair (which had actually become so covered with Oogy fur that it even looked like him) was in there. I closed the doors leading to the hallway. I brought in his water dish; I also brought in his bone blanket, spread it over the rug, and laid a bone on top of it for him. I made sure he was comfortable. Then I looked at the swinging door leading to the kitchen, trying to figure out what I could place against it that would prevent him from pushing it open. That’s when it dawned on me that he might try to push against it if he felt he could move it at all, which might lead to more problems than it prevented. Since it was a swinging door, I’d have to effectively block both sides lest he try to pull it open from the dining room. So I figured, Okay, he can access the kitchen, too, and I left that door open and closed the door leading from the kitchen into the hallway. Then I said good-bye and went to the offi
ce for a few hours.

  When I returned home, I found Oogy sleeping on the dining room table.

  The boys were away at camp for the rest of that week. Night came, and Jennifer eventually went up to bed. Earlier that evening, I had cut a piece of plywood the width of the stairs. I slid this into place between two of the banister newels to block Oogy’s access to the second floor and followed Jennifer upstairs. No sooner had I climbed into bed than I heard Oogy’s whine, followed quickly by a crashing noise. Within seconds, Oogy was standing next to the bed, wagging his tail and asking for attention. He had leapt over the plywood barrier. It was apparent that the only way to keep him from using the stairs was for me to sleep with him on the first floor. I gathered up a comforter and walked very slowly downstairs with him. I placed the comforter and a pillow on the family room floor, then lay down about three-quarters of the way to the right side of the comforter. I knew from prior experience that as I would move in my sleep, Oogy would move with me and that it was essentially impossible to get him to move back so I could reclaim my own space. Oogy curled up next to me, and we both eventually dozed off.

  Luckily, it was summer, so it was not a problem when Oogy needed to go out in the night. Oogy and I would slowly circle the yard once or twice under a canopy of stars — just the two of us and a few owls alive in our part of the world, watching the blinking lights of a plane slowly traversing the sky overhead, listening to the occasional passage of distant vehicles, all the flowers, red and yellow and white, now colorless in the clearing in front of the hedges.