A Dogs Story

Oogy's story

When our dog Oogy was about ten weeks old and weighed 20 pounds he was tied to a stake and used as bait for a Pit Bull. The left side of his face including most of his ear was torn off. He was bitten so hard a piece of his lower jaw was crushed. Afterward, he was thrown into a cage and left to bleed to death. He was found by police when they raided the facility and taken to an emergency service operating out of Ardmore Animal Hospital, in a suburb of Philadelphia. There, Diane Klein, the Office's Director of Operations, simply refused to allow the dog to die. Dr. James Bianco, the head of the hospital, operated for several hours to staunch the bleeding, replace the lost blood, and suture the gaping meat that Oogy's face had become. With the help of everyone on the staff somehow, beyond any calculation of the odds, Oogy survived.
The records from the ER have long since disappeared. As a result, I don't know which police raided the facility or where it was. I don't know how they learned there was a dog fighting operation there or what happened to the people who were busted in the raid. I can never know why the dog that attacked Oogy did not kill him. I can never know why the keepers simply did not execute him with a bullet to the back of his head and put him out of his misery. I am regularly overwhelmed by the incomprehensibility of circumstance. If any of these occurrences had changed, this story would not be written.
Not long after this occurred, my sons Noah and Dan and I took our 17 year old cat Buzz to AAH for what would be his final visit. The staff had just gathered Buzz in when this pup on a leash came trotting out from the back of the hospital where the doctoring gets done, ready to go for a walk outside. He exuded such joy that he seemed to shimmer and dance. He was pure white except for the left side of his face, which was swollen, raw pink scar tissue, as though it had melted. His right ear was flopped over the top of his head; the left ear was a jagged stump a thumb's width high. You would not put on what he looked like for Halloween. He was as smooth as butter and covered us with kisses. We fell instantly in love with him.
Life goes out one door and comes in another. As Noah said not long after Oogy came home: "I really feel bad about what happened to Oogy, but if it hadn't of happened he wouldn't be here."

"This is one of the happiest dogs I've ever met" Dr Bianco told us. "I can't imagine what he'd be like if half his face hadn't been ripped off." Diane took Oogy home for several weeks to make sure he was safe with kids, to house break and crate train him. Dr. B thought Oogy was a Pit Bull, which made my wife, Jennifer, somewhat apprehensive, but Dr. B assured her, "This dog doesn't have a mean bone in his body." Jen said she was concerned that the dog might bite someone. Dr. B looked at her and said, "This dog will never, ever, bite anyone." Still, on more than one occasion, people who were told Oogy that was a Pit Bull refused to let their children near him. The first company we called to install an electronic fence would not do so once they asked what kind of dog we had: they were afraid if Oogy went through the fence they could be sued.
Dr. B estimated that Oogy's adult weight would be about 45 - 50 pounds. By the time of his first check up six months later, Oogy weighed 70 pounds. When we walked into the animal hospital for that visit, one of the women who work there exclaimed "That's a Dogo!" "What's a Dogo?" I asked. She laughed and said, "I'm not sure." We learned that the Dogo Argentina is bred in that country to hunt mountain lion and boar. A Dogo can weigh up to 110 pounds and can cost thousands of dollars. Dogos hunt in packs. They are bred to run great distances and are capable of amazing bursts of speed. They run alongside their prey, hurl themselves against it to knock it down and then swarm it. Oogy can run - 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 - about 30 miles an hour. (He was running alongside the van so I clocked him). His hind leg muscles are so strong that, when he sits and the muscles bunch, his butt does not touch the ground. He looks something like a Pit Bull on steroids. He has a neck like a fire plug to protect him when he closes. A long rib cage curves back from a barrel chest to a Whippet's waist where the pistons that are his upper hind legs vertically repeat the curve. There are black splotches under his short white fur like a Dalmatian but fainter, more like shadows of spots than spots.