Bloodlines (8 page)

“Pretty,” I said. I described Missy and added, “Nice temperament, too.”

“I’d take her,” Lois said, her eyes on Betty, “but I haven’t got room now, you know. I’ve got two litters on the ground. I’d like to help, but I’m full up.”

The merest flicker of annoyance crossed Betty’s face. “I’m taking her. Holly’s driving her out to me tomorrow. But the next time you get someone looking for a pet puppy …”

You probably don’t need a translation, but just in case: A
pet puppy
means one who isn’t of show quality and can’t go to a show home. Let me add that a pet-quality puppy from a good show kennel is precisely what to look for if you ever buy a purebred puppy that you aren’t going to show. You’ll get the benefits of buying from a responsible breeder—genetic screening for hereditary conditions like hip dysplasia and eye disease, selective breeding for good temperament, the permanent availability of a knowledgeable person who cares about the dog, and the comfort of knowing that your dog’s parents are healthy, safe, happy, and well-fed. And, of course, a pet pup usually costs less than a show pup. But please consider a rescue dog first. I mean, puppies chew
everything, and they wake you up at night. They leave puddles and messes all over the floor, and before long, they turn into dogs, anyway.

Back to the Shawsheen Valley show. Lois, Betty, and I had retreated to the area where they’d set up their crates, chairs, and grooming equipment. In muted bellows, Lois was explaining that she’d love to take Missy but didn’t have room, and Betty Burley, who had no extra kennel space, either, was making Lois feel really guilty about not helping with rescue. Rowdy was sniffing through the wire mesh door of the crate that held Lois’s bitch, and I was standing there with my knees and thighs locked together.

Dog people learn to read body language. Before I’d even asked Lois or Betty to keep an eye on Rowdy for a few minutes, Lois glanced at me, assessed my posture, and said, “Holly, do you have to go to the bathroom?”

“Yes,” I said instantly. “Could you take Rowdy?” I handed her his leash. “I didn’t bring a crate. I’ll be right back.”

“Take your time,” Lois said. “It’ll take me a while to pack up. I’ll be here another ten or fifteen minutes.”

Like a lot of other indoor show sites, the Northeast Trade Center had a No Dogs Allowed sign outside the rest rooms, but at the Shawsheen Valley show, there was also a guard whose task seemed to be the enforcement of that stupid rule. I might’ve been able to sneak a Yorkie or a chihuahua into the ladies’ room. But a malamute? Also, since Rowdy isn’t neutered, he was obviously no lady. Anyway, I hurried off and discovered the usual, namely, that there was no one outside the men’s room, but six or eight women ahead of me in line for the ladies’. This phenomenon does not, as commonly supposed, constitute proof that the world is designed by and for men. In fact, all public rest rooms are planned by radical feminist architects whose hidden purpose is to convince women that if we ever expect to compete with men, we’d better learn to hurry up. Unfortunately, the women ahead of me had failed to get the message,
and it was at least ten minutes before I headed back to retrieve Rowdy.

Lois was easy to find. The grooming table that had stood by her crates was now folded up and resting against the wall, and she was tucking a slicker brush into her tack box. Her dogs were resting quietly in their crates. Rowdy was nowhere in sight.

I looked around and asked, “Where’s Rowdy?”

“Your cousin came and got him,” Lois said, without looking up. “Didn’t she find you?”

My cousin?

“Janice?” I asked. My cousin Janice shows wire-haired fox terriers, but she’s an incredible moocher. If she’d been going to Shawsheen Valley, she’d have invited herself and five or ten dogs to stay with me. On arrival, she’d have announced that the dogs were overdue for their shots. I was still seeing that vet, wasn’t I? He wouldn’t mind writing her a prescription for Panacur, too, would he? All this gratis, of course. If Janice had taken Rowdy and gone off in search of me, I thought, it could only be because one of the fox terriers required major surgery that Janice wanted Steve to do for free. Then my heart leaped. “Leah?” I asked eagerly. “Long curly red hair? Where’d …?”

But Lois was shaking her head. “Uh-uh. Dark hair. Long.” She paused, obviously fishing for a euphemism. “Damp looking.”

Oily? Janice has light hair, and one good thing to be said about her is that she
is
clean. My heart began to pound, and I broke out in a sweat. Yes, a sweat. Sure, horses sweat, men perspire, and ladies glisten, but a lady who’s lost her dog is an animal.

“Where did they go?” I yelled at Lois and added, as though I’d been unclear the first time, “Which way did they go?” If Lois had been a dog, I’d have grabbed the scruff of her fat neck with both my hands and administered a hard shakedown. As it was, I glared at her and spat out: “Lois, God damn it, you have just
given
Rowdy to some stranger! Where are they?” Don’t ask
me how I expected her to know. Then the obvious finally hit me: Lois had no idea. “For Christ’s sake,” I pleaded, “help me! Help me look for him!”

My ears pounded with the words of advice I’d offered my readers again and again: Never leave your dog unattended at a show. Never. But I hadn’t left Rowdy unattended. I’d left him with Lois Metzler, a malamute breeder, a responsible person, someone who knew as well as I did that vicious, greedy people will steal show dogs. Dognappers will hold them for ransom. Puppy mill operators will match them with AKC papers and breed them. Wolf hybridizers won’t care about papers, but they’ll sure go for a malamute, especially an obvious stud like Rowdy, beautiful and wolflike, gentle and friendly. And the liberationists, the animal rights lunatics! I’d heard all the rumors and had passed along the warnings. Rowdy would be easy prey, swishing his tail, making eyes, playing up to everyone. An unknown crated dog could’ve turned protective, might’ve growled and bitten, but Rowdy would’ve been a no-risk steal. And, to someone who knew nothing about dogs, Rowdy would have looked so damned
natural
, as if he could fend for himself once he’d been freed from the bonds of human exploitation. Released. Turned loose. Manumitted. Liberated. Right next to I-95.

In my sprint for the nearest exit, I shoved past a massive Kuvasz, barely missed crushing a brace of Maltese, crashed into a blessedly forgiving Newfie, and narrowly missed tripping over a darling Cairn and plunging down onto a German shorthaired pointer. In my terror, I fixed on a mad idea: Why hadn’t I just dashed off to Sally Brand? Rowdy belonged where’d he never be lost, on my skin, under it, permanently inked and linked to me. What did it matter where? On my back, on my arm, or inside my ear like the ID number on a French dog.

As I neared the cafeteria, though, I spotted a crowd of people and dogs in an area away from the show rings, and I heard what I’m now convinced are the most beautiful words in the English language. They aren’t
cellar
door
, of course, and they aren’t what my fellow writer, Dorothy Parker, said, either:
Check enclosed.
If your partner and soul mate has vanished at a show, the most beautiful words in the English language are
loose dog.
“Loose dog!” voices called out. “Loose dog!”

One of the worst and best things about being a supposed expert on dogs is that your own dogs, the ones you presumably understand best, teach you over and over again that you know nothing at all. I pushed and squirmed through the crowd around the concession stand. From Rowdy’s point of view—evidently situated in his stomach—he’d done the obvious. Before I caught sight of him, I heard the trail mix crunch under my feet. The guy who held Rowdy’s leash was a jovial, ursine young Rottie-owner I’d noticed now and then in the obedience rings. I’d always liked his happy, easygoing manner with his dogs, and I liked it now with Rowdy. The two of them made me think of some corny children’s movie about a bear and wolf who become pals. They beamed at one another, the man obviously proud to be the hero who’d caught the loose dog. Dogs do get loose at shows by accident, of course. Exhibitors sometimes forget to latch the crates, and there are a few notorious canine Houdinis who’ve figured out how to escape from anything. Once loose, though, most of those dogs are terrified: disoriented, bewildered, scared silly, sometimes outright panicked. Not Rowdy, though. The opportunistic show-off had grabbed the chance for an unexpected feast and was now reveling in his role as the center of everyone’s attention. When he caught sight of me, the tempo of his tail quickened to allegro, and he burst into song. No exaggeration, either. Song.
Woo-woo-woo-woo.
In case I haven’t already bragged about Rowdy, let me tell you that he has a truly spectacular voice. Objectively speaking, the dog should attend the New England Conservatory of Music instead of the Cambridge Dog Training Club. You really should hear him. Anyway, I won’t swear to the following, but I will wager a small bet on it. I’m not positive, of course, but I
think it’s possible, and his song definitely carried a note of triumph, at least to my ears. Grinning and wagging and wooing there in the center of the crowd, Rowdy sure acted and sounded like a dog who knows he’s just gone Best in Show.

Every exhibitor at Shawsheen Valley, myself included, had sat through plenty of hellfire-and-brimstone preaching about the evildoings of radical animal liberationists. If Rowdy had been killed, my brethren in dog worship would have joined me in praying for the salvation of his soul, and, while we had God’s ear, we would’ve whispered a few words of advice about the appropriate final destination of blackguards who commit crimes against dogs. But with my domesticated wolf returned to the fold, we were as thrilled as a congregation of ardent revivalists who’ve just witnessed sin itself in flagrante delicto right there in the middle of their own camp meeting—witnessed it, yes, but been left unsullied.

Twenty or thirty people asked me how it had happened, and, although no one said it, I was willing to bet that every single one of those people was thinking the same thing:
Don’t you know better than to leave your dog unattended at a show?
Despite everyone’s tactful silence on the matter of my apparent irresponsibility, I kept defending myself. “I left him with a friend, and she got conned, I guess,” I’d say. “He was with someone I know. I don’t know what happened.”

When Rowdy and I finally reached Lois Metzler, who’d quit smoking a couple of years earlier, she was
flopped in her folding chair taking big, wheezy drags on a cork-filtered cigarette, but she looked more in need of oxygen than of nicotine.

“Holy Christ,” she greeted me.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Really, Rowdy’s fine. He was at that damned concession stand with all the nuts and candy and stuff. The worst thing that’ll happen is that he’ll vomit up a mess of trail mix.”

“Jesus,” she said.

“It’s okay,” I repeated. “It’s over, okay? But could you, uh … Lois, I still don’t know what happened. Some woman came up and said …?”

“Faith stopped by,” Lois began.

Faith Barlow handles Rowdy in breed. He associates her with liver and glory. At the sight of Faith, he sparkles all over.

“And?” I prompted.

“And so we said hello, and Faith gave Rowdy a treat, and she asked where you were. And so I told her, and she said, ‘Yeah, well, there’s a big line, so don’t expect her back soon.’ So I said something like, ‘Well, that’s okay.’ ”

“And?”

“And Faith left, and this girl came up.”

The story we pieced together was that the dark-haired stranger had probably overheard Faith and Lois, and thus picked up my name and Rowdy’s. She’d learned that I’d be gone for a while, and just as Faith was leaving, she’d stepped up to Lois, claimed to be my cousin, and strolled off with Rowdy, who, like most malamutes, is always so delighted to make the acquaintance of yet one more fascinating and possibly food-bearing member of our species that he’ll go with anyone. If the stranger had been a dog, Lois would, of course, have supplied a minutely-detailed description that would’ve enabled me or anyone else unhesitatingly to spot her in a crowd of thousands. As it was, I was able to establish that the stranger was a dark-haired female between the ages of fifteen and fifty who wore
black or navy clothing and looked “damp.” Damp, for God’s sake. I’d driven to the show through a gray winter drizzle. Most of the dogs had been blown dry for the ring, but “damp” fit at least half the people there.

At that point, Mary Kalinowski, Shawsheen’s show chairman, appeared. Trailing after her were a couple of morose security guards and four or five dressed-up people wearing show officials’ badges. Ever worked on a show? Well,
worked
hardly says it. It’s like giving a wedding with two or three thousand guests. The planning begins at least a year in advance, and, as the date draws near, the momentum builds, the tasks multiply, and the people in charge, especially the chairman and the chief steward, start waking up in the night and scrawling notes to remind themselves not to forget the final five or ten thousand details that will make the show run smoothly, which is to say, without incident. The officials’ faces were tight, bleak, and determined. What had just happened to Rowdy was, of course, an Incident. The officials intended to investigate it.