June 4, 2010

• The Gandhi of Dogs

  
  Today would have been my dog Oreo’s 25th birthday, so I’m reposting this.  His biography rivals that of some people, but I think it’s a fitting tribute to a faithful companion. 

  Oreo was born on June 4, 1985 (the same day the Oreo cookie was invented in 1912) on a farm in Mattoon, Illinois.  He was an adorable puppy, mischievous, and ornery from the beginning, with a true mind of his own (just like his master!).

  I originally agreed to “watch” Oreo for a boy in my neighborhood who picked him up from a farmer during a summer job.  The boy’s grandmother said he could not keep the puppy, so I said he could stay at our house in Charleston, IL, (where I went to college, Eastern Illinois University) until a suitable home was found.  Needless to say, from that day forward, July 13, 1985, Oreo belonged to me.

  My friend Meg Slattery actually named Oreo.  When he was a puppy, he was all black, with white in the middle.  When she suggested Oreo, I knew it was the perfect name.  (Other names on the “short” list were: Thor, Bosco, and Ranger.)  The vet suspected Oreo was a mix of German Shepherd, Sheepdog, Wolfhound, and Wire Terrier.  A pure mutt!

  From the beginning, Oreo was a unique dog.  That first summer, I would ride my bike to campus, and he would  stick his little head out of my backpack the whole time.  I was only taking one class that summer, so I used to spend hours on campus, training him to wait for me whenever I went inside a building.  It took a whole summer, but he eventually learned how to wait for me for over an hour.  Of course, in the beginning, the slightest thing would distract him, and he would be gone.  He loved squirrels, children, even bugs.  Anything could get his attention.

  I remember that he always walked slightly diagonally.  He could never walk a perfect straight line.  The summer of ’85 was unusually hot in Illinois.  Oreo loved to go to the lake, and jump in the water any chance he got.  I have such fond memories of that year.  When Oreo was about 7 months old, he started wandering the neighborhood on his own.  It was a small  town, and most everyone knew him already.  He was quickly becoming a mascot on campus, and he eventually learned where every grade school in town was located.  He used to know when recess was at each school, and show up to play with the kids.

  

  The kids of course loved it.  Oreo would go down the slide with them, and use his front paws to push them on the merry go round.  Since I baby-sat for over 50 kids in town, nearly everyone knew him already.  The principals however, weren’t as pleased.  I used to get phone calls all the time, telling me that my dog was at recess again.  This practice continued for many years, even after I graduated and moved to Chicago. When I lived in the suburbs of Chicago, Oreo used to go to three schools within a five mile radius of our house!  He crossed some major roads to get there, but he always looked both ways before he crossed. I worked about 40 miles away at the time.  When the principals of the schools would call me at work (I had my work # on his tags), I would tell them to just wait until recess was over, and he would leave.  Sure enough he did.

  I actually spied on him one day to discover where he went on his travels.  I always put him in our fenced in back yard before leaving for my job at the bank each morning.  One morning I actually drove away, but parked around the corner, and waited to see what Oreo would do.  Sure enough, at about 9:00, he jumped the fence (a little reminiscent of this cute beagle) and started making his rounds.  He went to several schools, and stopped off at several different spots where he was assured to find an open can of cat food, or some tasty garbage to indulge in!

  

  He also used to play games with the dog-catcher.  He was on their “10 Most Wanted” List for several years, but  he always managed to foil them, and hide, or run back to the house and scratch the door to come inside, just in the nick of time!  He always learned quickly what the dog-catcher’s van looked like, in every city we lived in.

  Oreo is the only dog I know who graduated from college.  During my outdoor graduation ceremony in 1987, Oreo actually saw me cross the stage to receive my diploma.  As he had attended most of my classes with me, he naturally felt he deserved a diploma as well.  He would usually wait outside, but occasionally he would sucker a kind soul to let him in the door (puppy dog eyes), where he would proceed to sniff me out in whatever classroom I was in.  I still sometimes hear the jingle jangle his collar used to make, and remember the sinking feeling of my dog interrupting an important exam, or a complicated business law lecture.  More than a few times, he came “bounding” into a crowded lecture hall, and ran right to me!

  Oreo had such an interesting life.  He went all over the United States with me.  In my last job where I traveled for 13 years, certain customers of mine would ask for him by name.  Hotels that would not usually allow dogs, allowed Oreo.  He used to love the VIP (Very Important Pet) program at the Omni in downtown Chicago.  They would turn down his bed sheets at night, and leave him a minty dog biscuit!

  Perhaps the most famous Oreo adventure occurred in August of 1987.  I had just graduated from college, found a job and finally found a house to rent in the Chicago suburbs that allowed an 85 pound dog, and had fenced-in (all be it “jumpable”) back yard.  Our first night in the house, Oreo pawed the door open at about 4 AM, because there was another dog in the yard.  I heard him trying to get out, but was too sleepy to care.  In the morning, Oreo was gone.  It was a hot Saturday morning, I had not even lived there 24 hours, and my dog was gone!  I was frantic, and drove around the city looking for him. 

  I enlisted kids on the block to ride their bikes up and down all of the streets calling Oreo’s name, but it was no  use, he was gone.  By nightfall, I had a feeling I knew where Oreo was headed.  Home.  Charleston, IL, where I went to college, was 200 miles due south.  Oreo had grown up there.  He went to every class with me and waited outside every building.  It was all he ever knew.

  I went to bed that night with a heavy heart.  The next morning as I sat teary eyed at my mother’s kitchen table reading the paper, I saw it.  There, on the front page of the sports section of the Chicago Tribune, was a picture of Oreo, being shooed off the golf course at the Western Open!  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  The Western Open was being held in Oakbrook, some 45 miles south of our new house.  Oreo was definitely on his way back to Charleston. 

  In the picture, he looked scared and dirty.  My heart went out to him.  Luckily all of his tags still referred to our old address in Charleston.  That morning, I called Animal Control in Charleston, and told them to be expecting Oreo, and gave them all of my vital information.

  

  What I didn’t know, was shortly after the newspaper picture was taken, a kind hearted woman named Lola Proulx, had bought Oreo 8 hot dogs, and gotten a rope around his neck.  Lola, a true dog lover, with over 9 of her own, took Oreo to the Hinsdale Humane Society, and waited until Monday morning to call down to Charleston and trace his tags.  The Animal Control people in Charleston, gave her my work number, and that Monday morning I received the most triumphant phone call of my life.  “I found your dog”, Lola screamed.  I yelled out in the lobby of the bank “They found my dog”, and the whole office cheered!

  I got Oreo back that afternoon, leaving work early to drive down to retrieve him.  I never saw him happier to see me!  After that, he never strayed far again, though his adventures were never curtailed!  (Ever since that day, he was scared to death of trains and train tracks.  I suspect he nearly got hit by a train on his long journey, and until the day he died, I always went out of my way in the car, to avoid railroad crossings whenever Oreo was with me.)  After making a donation to the Humane Society that day, Oreo and I went home!

  Oreo adapted well to city living.  Everyone loved him.  He became friends with homeless people in downtown Chicago.  He continued playing with children everywhere.  He once had a close call with a herd of huge elk, whose fence he somehow penetrated.  It was a cold winter day, and I wasn’t paying attention to where Oreo was running.  When the herd began to charge him, a crowd of people started screaming.  When it looked as if the end was near (as the leader of the pack with a horn span twice the length of Oreo bowed to jab him with his horns), Oreo found the hole in the fence which he had entered through, and ran to my waiting arms as the crowd cheered!

  When I started a new job in 1990, I moved back down to Charleston to take care of some children who needed my help; Oreo was back in his element.  He loved college life.  Fraternity parties, beer blasts, and of course graduation ceremonies.  Homecoming was always a special time for him, as he renewed old acquaintances, and made new friends.  I can’t tell you how many times I heard strangers on campus say, “Oh that’s Oreo, he’s a campus dog, he doesn’t have an owner.”, or “That’s Oreo, he was at the Sigma Chi party the other night!”.

  He was such a kind dog.  He learned tolerance early on, when I worked at three homes for developmentally disabled adults while I was in college.  He suffered much abuse as a puppy, at the hands of these “big kids” who really didn’t know their own strength.  Oreo never bit anyone, though after a mailman threw a rock at him when he was a year old, he had a lifelong vengeance for the US Postal Service.  (He loved the UPS and FedEx drivers though!)

  In the summer of 1993, Oreo was shot with a 38 caliber revolver, by a disgruntled, miserable campus security officer, with nothing better to do.  It was late at night.  I was visiting a friend on campus, after all the summer classes had left and the school was deserted.  My friend was the only one left in her building, and Oreo was waiting patiently outside for me, with a bowl of water next to him.

  We had had run-ins with “Officer” Hall before.  He never liked Oreo, and always told me to put him on a leash.  I’m proud to say that I never once put Oreo on a leash.  There was no leash law on campus anyway, dogs were allowed to be under voice command.  This particular “officer” once made a fool of himself in front of many people, by trying to “arrest” me for not having Oreo on a leash.  Oreo got the last laugh though, when he ran away as the “rent-a-cop” was trying to catch him.

  

  That evening, with no one around, “Officer” Hall shot Oreo at point blank range in the chest.  When I came downstairs to check on Oreo, he was gone.  Oreo was NEVER not waiting for me when I came back from someplace, and when I saw the pool of blood on the pavement, my heart sank.  

  

  My best friend Dan and I, searched for Oreo for hours.  We finally found him, at home, a mile and a half from where he had been shot.  He had CRAWLED all that way, and lost over half his blood.

  Dan and I were in shock.  As Dan drove us to the vet, I cradled Oreo, now almost comatose, in my arms in the back seat.  The vet immediately started an I.V. and performed a blood transfusion.  Miraculously, Oreo lived.  The bullet missed his heart by an inch, and left an exit wound the size of a quarter.  From that day on, Oreo was scared to death of police officers, guns, and fireworks.  The 4th of July was always a horrible time for him, and to this day I think of him, and say in my head, “It’s OK Or..”.

  

  The response to the “attempted assassination” of Oreo was overwhelming.  Conspiracy theories abounded.  Was the gunman on the grassy knoll?  Was the mob involved? Perhaps a secret Post Office consortium?  A triangular shot pattern?  We may never know.  Dan even wrote a rather dark poem about it:

  Some bastard shot dog Oreo,
  And shot him in the chest.
  Some canine killer put a bullet through old boy,
  Trying to kill one of the best.

  If I should ever find,
  That man, that gun, that beast.
  I’ll chop his bloody head right off,
  And let Oreo have a feast.

  I’ll take an axe to the monster,
  Who tried to murder such a sweet friend.
  And wonder if that keen mutt realized,
  Revenge was taken in the end.
  

  I do know that I received cards and letters from all over the world!  I (actually Oreo) received my first telegram (from Brazil!), and kids in the neighborhood brought toys and treats at all hours.  The house looked like a hospital room after someone undergoes major surgery!  So many flowers.

  

  The bank I used to work at sent out a group fax to all 25 branches.  The Internet was not as widely used back then, but postings on a newsgroup alerted people all over the world of Oreo’s hour by hour recovery.

  

  At a Midwestern Banker’s Conference, Bob, the president of my company was giving a speech about a recent retreat he had been to, where Bill Clinton spoke about banking reform.  Later, in the receiving line several people wanted to know about Oreo’s condition.  “How’s Oreo?  We heard he was shot!” they said.  Our company president who was new, and not familiar with Oreo’s legacy at that time, could only think to himself, “I just met with the President of the United States, and they want to know about OREO??”  We laugh about it to this day, and it’s rumored that Bob’s dog Cody looked up to Oreo!

  

  I once gave Oreo a “dog IQ” test.  He scored as a genius!  I know a lot of people think their dogs are smart.  But Oreo was so intuitively humanlike it was scary.  When other people were in the room with him, alone, they would talk to him!  It wasn’t just me.  My friend Claudio used to teach Oreo commands in Portuguese, and he learned them!  In the later years when he lived with Dan and Angela when I traveled, he learned to care for the babies.  He knew Angela was going to give birth the night before Mia was born.  He slept by Angela’s side, and he took care of her.  Oreo had many nicknames, Dan used to call him “Bubba” or “Bubba Chops”. I often simply called him “Or”.

  

  I took him everywhere!  The President of one of the banks I used to work at, loved dogs.  I would take Oreo to work with me every morning, and he would lay outside the bank until the lobby closed.  At 3:00 he would come in and lay under my desk, or wander around to see if he could help in any way.  The tellers actually used to take him in the cash vault with them for “dual control”!  He was the hit of all the picnics and parties, and continued to visit schools at recess until he died.

  

  When a friend of mine in Los Angeles landed the 2nd Assistant Director job on the television show “Friends”, I was lucky enough to attend a taping in 1994, and meet the cast.  As I carried pictures of Oreo with me wherever I went, one of the crew put a picture of Oreo on the refrigerator on the set, where it remained for the remainder of the second season.  If you paused your VCR at just the right spot, you could make out Oreo’s handsome mug in several scenes!  Of course, after that Oreo wanted an agent, and the whole Hollywood thing started to go to his already swelled head!  Once I flew to from New York to L.A. and sat next to Meg Ryan.  We talked a little, and I showed her pictures of Oreo.  She thought he was a “beautiful dog”.  That too, went to his head! 

    

  His mannerisms were truly unique.  He would cock his head, on cue, with certain words:  “Treat”, “Ride”, “Walk” and his all time favorite “Rusty”.  Rusty was Oreo’s best friend when we were in college.  He belonged to my Finance professor Carol.  I used to baby-sit her kids.  They lived out in the country, and Oreo and Rusty would run through the countryside, and play for hours on end.  Rusty was tragically poisoned after I graduated, but the name “Rusty” always invoked a near 90° tilt of Oreo’s head for the rest of his life.  Other close dog friends that Oreo remembered all his life were Ginger, Cage and Pork Chop.  When you said those names, you could practically see Oreo’s memory at work.  Oreo used to do a trick when he was younger called “Fire”, in which he would literally drag himself across the ground like he was crawling out of a house in a fire.  He would perform this trick on cue, which often invoked quite a laugh when campus preachers were engaged in fire and brimstone speeches on the Quad!  Oreo would also howl hilariously.  Whenever we would howl, he would mimic us exactly.  Thinking of that, still makes me laugh to this day.

  

  Dan used to invoke a mischievous Pavlovian response from Oreo with the word “Buku”.  He somehow taught Oreo to “hump” whenever he said that word.  Though I did not approve, the simple mention of that word caused endless laughter at many college parties over the years.  Oreo was a master of physical canine comedy!

  Dan also used to do a drawing of Oreo every year for my Christmas cards.  It became an annual tradition that so many people looked forward to during the holidays.  My favorite drawing was the one Dan did the year Oreo was shot.  It shows Santa, going up the chimney, and Oreo sitting by the fireplace, after Santa had just left him a new ACME Bulletproof Vest!

   

  Everyone had unique stories about Oreo.  Some I never knew.  After he died at the ripe old age of 12, Michelle, a  little girl I used to babysit, created a memorial website called Oreonline, while the Internet was still in its infancy.  She did it out of loyalty to a friend she had known since she was two years old.  I received so many hundreds of emails, cards, and letters after Oreo died., and all of them were posted on that first website.

  

  

  A strange event occurred exactly a week after Oreo passed away.  After a business trip to Tokyo, I flew to Guam for some quiet reflection.  That day I was on a remote mountain top (more of a hill, really) on the island of Guam, waiting for the sun to set, and taking pictures.  As I climbed the small mountain, I was struck by the calm and serenity of the surrounding countryside.  At the top of the peak was a tree.  As I approached the tree, I saw rainbow colored ribbons adorning the branches, and dried, dead fish attached to the ribbon!?  When I reached the base of the tree, there was a dead fish, with ribbon, and six perfectly placed OREO cookies on the ground!?  These were not imitation cookies, they were Oreos.  What this meant, or means, I to this day have no earthly idea.  I asked local people if they knew of some strange custom.  They had no explanation.

  

  Suffice it to say, I will never know why I saw those cookies atop that mountain, but it did remind me of a true friend, who was there for me whenever I needed him most.  A friend who taught me love and compassion, discipline and how to care for a living thing, forgiveness and trust.  This was Oreo’s legacy.  He was the Gandhi of dogs.  His inner peace affected all who touched him, and all those he touched.  I have yet to get another dog, though any reader of this blog knows that I have many wonderful dogs in my life.  He can never be replaced, but his memory will live forever.

  • 8:55 pm
  • 149 Comments