pup had so immediately and so completely reposed his trust in us made all of us feel that we had been rewarded.
He was one of us.
CHAPTER 6
The Third Twin
t he next morning, the second day of Oogy in our lives, when the alarm went off and I managed to wrestle myself out of bed, I did not make it three feet before I heard a thump from Noah’s room, the clacking of toenails on the hardwood floor, and the jingling of the tags on Oogy’s collar as he ran to greet me. I dropped to one knee and said, “Good morning, pal. Good morning, Oogy. Did you sleep okay?” I gave him a vigorous rubdown, slapped him gently on the flanks. “And what would you like for breakfast this morning?” I asked him. “Pancakes okay with you?”
He followed me into the bathroom, standing there while I washed my face and brushed my teeth. He followed me downstairs into the kitchen, wagging his tail the entire time as though it were motorized. I mixed up his food, and snuffling and grunting, he bent to it. After starting the coffee, I clipped the leash on him and we headed outside, where a bitter wind was blowing. His fur was so short that I wondered if I should buy him a protective covering of some sort.
When we went back inside and I planted myself at the foot of the stairs to call upstairs to wake everyone, Oogy was by my side. In the kitchen, while I made breakfast for the boys, Oogy lay on the floor watching me. He sat with the boys while they ate, wandered upstairs with them while they dressed, sat with them while they watched TV, joined us in the kitchen when they left for school. From the moment he had crossed the doorsill, he had been inseparable from us.
And every weekday morning after Jennifer and the boys had left, and after we’d had our couch time and I was ready to leave the house, I would have to drag Oogy to the crate by his collar and push his backside into it, and he would bark and bark in protest. I wasn’t insensitive to this, but I thought that since crate-trained dogs loved their crates, Oogy was simply complaining that we were leaving him alone and that once he was alone, he would surrender to the safety the crate represented. It never occurred to me that something else might be going on.
Apart from his resistance to the crate, it was remarkable how thoroughly Oogy enjoyed whatever it was he encountered. He was so happy to be where he was that he almost seemed to be carrying an electric charge. When friends came to visit, as soon as he heard a vehicle in the driveway, Oogy would leap off the couch or whatever chair he was on and dash into the hall. For a moment or two his churning legs would search for a foothold on the throw rug there before he would go tearing out the back door. He would greet our visitors by placing both paws on whichever side of the car he could reach first, standing on his hind legs to peer in. As a young dog, he was also fond of standing up on his back legs and placing his front paws on the chest or shoulders of people he was meeting for the first time. This necessitated quite a number of red alerts around the elderly, including Noah and Dan’s great-aunts and great-uncles. One afternoon, Jennifer was playing with Oogy in the yard when he started running in circles. I later learned this was an expression of sheer happiness. This time, though, after one of his circles had been completed, Oogy ran directly into Jennifer, knocking her down. Her right knee was swollen for days. We had no way of knowing at the time that the act of hurling himself against her was a reflection of what he had been bred to do.
Years before the boys were born, my brother had given me a cartoon he’d clipped out of a magazine in which a stern-faced judge in a black robe is looking down at a little doggy and, gavel raised, declares: “Not guilty, because puppies do these things.” Diane had cautioned Jennifer that because Oogy was young and obviously so high-energy, his behavior might not always be what she would like
Anne Perry
Andy Cox
L. C. Chase
Jessica Appleby
Chris Hedges
Michael Connelly
Evelyn Glass
Susan Beth Pfeffer
Cheyenne McCray
Patricia Elliott