Dog and I (4 page)

We carried her home, wrapped her in blankets, and called the veterinarian's office. It was just up the street so we hurried in, an emergency. The vet—a wonderfully patient man with the best bedside manners I've ever seen—confirmed the suspicion. A stroke. And a serious one. He talked to us for a long while about quality of life. He didn't have to. This is what this whole thing had been about for the last four years.

He said she was suffering and would suffer even more if we did not act out of compassion. He did not suggest but we took up the suggestion anyway. We would do it right away. He asked if we wished to be with her. Of course we did.

He gave us a few minutes alone with her. There were tears, of course, though none from her. She was periodically wagging her tail and looking up with the one eye that still seemed as though it could see.

“Ready?” he asked, opening the door only slightly. We opened it the rest of the way. “Ready.” But, of course, we weren't. No one ever is for what it feels like.

It was very quick, very quiet. Ellen stroked Cindy's head as the needle went in.

And Cindy purred.

Mortification at the Fall Fair

I went to
Best of Show
by accident. We were told to go to some other movie by one of the kids—“You
have
to see it!”—and so, like obedient parents, we shuffled off to the local cinema with its twenty-four screens and ten-deep lineups. Perhaps the line went on too long. Whatever— when I finally got to the window I'd forgotten the title we just
had
to see and said, “Two for
Best of Show,
please.”

It was a happy screw-up.
Best of Show
is about a New York dog competition, a movie about eccentric breeders and posh kennel clubs and strange-looking animals and their equally strange-looking handlers. It is fiction but intended to feel like a documentary—and it is hilarious. Fred Willard plays a colour analyst called “Buck” Laughlin, and when he isn't going on about his proctologist he's making the most wildly inappropriate comments, such as, “I went to one of those obedience places once—
it was all going well until they spilled hot candle wax on my private parts!
”

But it wasn't anything Buck said that sent me spinning back in time. It was a very quick, somewhat funny comment by another actor, whose dog suddenly reaches up to lick his face during the competition.
“Don't!”
he shouts out.
“Not the lips!”

Sitting there watching
Best of Show,
I drifted back to my own singular experience with a dog show. I would say what year it was, but readers might then wonder how I could possibly still be alive. So please just accept that it was a long time ago and involved Cindy, a dog no longer with us—so she cannot be embarrassed by this story. And mercifully, there was no Buck Laughlin around at the Huntsville Fall Fair to offer running commentary on the incident.

I had a new puppy at a time when it seemed as if there wasn't a kid along Reservoir Hill who didn't come with a dog. Cindy was a cute little thing with blond, curling fur. She was close to a spaniel, but without the bobbed tail. Brent and Ron next door had Buster, who had what appeared to be a healthy mix of hound, husky, shepherd and, given its small size, perhaps dachshund. Donnie up the street had Ric, so close to a German shepherd that it might even have been a purebred— surely the only one in town—but I don't ever remember anyone mentioning papers or anything. Sinclair, across Mary Street from Brent and Ron, had Lady, a bright little poodle-terrier mix and considerably older than the other dogs. Bob, down Mary Street a bit, had Queenie, a sister of Buster.

There was a notice on the telephone pole that stood at the corner of Lorne and Mary streets between Bob's house and Brent's.

Huntsville Fall Fair Dog Show!

Children Under 12 Only! Cash Prizes!

We read it and could not believe it. The annual fair was coming to town—midways, animals, sideshows, candy floss, thrill rides—and the chance to get into the fair for free and maybe even win a little money for the midway was irresistible. We all decided to enter. Each one of us who owned a dog.

It is difficult in a time of twenty-four-screen theatres to describe just what the fall fair coming to a small town once meant. It was a day off for the schools. The students lined up, class by class, and marched the entire length of Main Street, up Brunel Road and down past the hockey rink to the fairgrounds. The high school marching band led the parade, the mayor rode in a convertible, and there were floats for everything from the 4-H Club to the contestants who would be competing to be named Fall Fair Princess.

It was a time for stretching imaginations, for suspending disbelief, for opening up any and all possibilities, from the chance of getting the cute girl up the street onto the merry-go-round to running away with the midway.

Those of us who made up what was known as the Mary Street Gang had once stood in line to pay our quarters—a considerable sum in those days for tenand eleven-year-olds—for the opportunity to enter a pitch-black tent and stare, hopelessly, into a dark pool that held “The Hippo That Sweats Blood!” We could hear something sloshing around in the dark, but had not the slightest proof that it was a hippopotamus. It had to be, though. The man outside said it was. And we had paid good money for the right to see one of the greatest mysteries of the world.

The hippo, the man said, had to be kept constantly in a pool of oil. If we listened, we could hear him moving about. We listened; we heard something. We took the man at his word. “We cannot reveal this strange and unusual creature to the sunlight!” he shouted in the darkness. “He has to be kept in the dark. He has to live in dark oil, not water. If the sun shines on him, he will sweat. And if he sweats, he
dies
—cruelly drained of his life juices!”

Well, who could argue with that? Did any of us want a dead hippo—especially the only one in the world that sweats blood—on his conscience? Of course not. We simply filed out, not questioning the man, and promptly headed off to tell others that we had seen one of the great wonders of the world.

You never knew what would happen at a Huntsville Fall Fair. Sometimes there were stories you wanted to tell, like “The Hippo That Sweats Blood,” and sometimes there were stories you prayed no one would ever tell. Like the Day of the Dog Show.

THAT DAY
we all gathered at Brent and Ron's with our dogs. Mine was, by far, the youngest of the assembled dogs, a puppy still in the early stages of training. But Cindy was so friendly she fit in, even with the bigger and much older dogs like Ric, the shepherd. We had no idea what to expect. The notice nailed up on the telephone pole had said nothing about specifics. Just “Dog Show,” and that was good enough for us. We figured it would have to do with walking the dogs back and forth, making them sit and perhaps even stay. Donnie advised, and we all agreed, that we should carry small dog biscuits in our pockets as rewards for the dogs. It seemed a sensible thing to do. So we filled our pockets from a bag in Brent and Ron's kitchen and set out for the fairgrounds and arena.

We knew the arena well. It was where we played hockey in winter and lacrosse in summer. A few of us from Reservoir Hill even had our team pictures up on the walls. It was a place of great memories—up until the dog show.

They had us assemble with our dogs behind the stands, waiting to be called out. We were practically the only entries, the five dogs of Reservoir Hill and two other dogs, one handled by a young girl in a church dress, from another part of town. We barely knew the other kids entering. We said nothing to them and they said nothing to us. Our dogs snarled at theirs and their dogs barked at ours. Neighbourhoods were like that in those days.

They held the preliminaries for the Fall Fair Princess and then announced the dog show. The man announcing— a large, pot-bellied man also, unfortunately, named Roy—wore dark pants and red suspenders over a white shirt, his sleeves rolled up and held by black barber's bands, with a small dark fedora, looking as if it had been punched, set far back on his head. His teeth were as yellowed, chipped, and crooked as the tombstones at the pioneer cemetery. He showed them a lot because, even before the dog show began, he seemed to think it was funny.

They gave us numbers. Donnie was first, with Ric. I was last, seventh, with Cindy. It was fortunate that they gave Donnie and Ric number one. Donnie was the best of us all with dogs; Ric was the smartest. The man called Roy brought Donnie out and had him walk Ric about the stage. Big and dark and elegant, Ric moved about gracefully, the leash looping to show it was not even necessary, and appreciative applause went up from the crowd.

Some of us peeked around from behind the tarpaulin screen that stood between the stage and the staging area for the dogs and their owners. I could see faces in the crowd that I knew. There were more people there than I had expected—What else was there to do on a fall evening in a small town that got only one television channel and had but a single theatre?—and I shuddered, suddenly wishing I could be anywhere else but here at that precise moment with my excitable little untrained puppy.

The Master of Ceremonies then had Donnie do some basic tricks with Ric. He had Donnie make Ric sit, which Ric did perfectly. Then shake a paw. Perfect again, and Donnie slipped Ric one of his dog biscuits.

“Show us how your dog will stay,” Roy instructed.

Donnie nodded. He had Ric sit first. He pointed forcefully at him.
“Stay!”
he commanded. Ric stayed. Donnie walked completely across the stage, his back to the dog, and then turned. Ric stayed.

“How about
that?!
” the man called Roy barked into his microphone. The arena exploded in applause and cheers. You would think Donnie—or perhaps Ric—had just scored in overtime.

Donnie and Ric left to applause, and the MC began working through the numbers. Brent and Ron argued about who should go out with Buster, and eventually Brent did and Buster did a fair loop of the stage and not much more. But since the man called Roy seemed to know Brent, or more likely Brent and Ron's popular father, Maurice, an appliance salesman at the local Eaton's store, he congratulated Brent on his finelooking dog and the crowd seemed to agree.

The boy from another part of town went out and his dog performed fairly well, though kept barking. Sinc went out with Lady, and Lady, one of the smartest dogs I have ever known, was virtually flawless, almost as if she'd studied Ric and was doing exactly as she'd seen the big shepherd do.

They called out number five, Bob and his dog Queenie, and Queenie froze at the tarp and refused to go out at all. Bob yanked on his leash, but the dog, a powerful little mutt with wide shoulders, put down her haunches and absolutely refused. Bob pulled, Queenie refused, the man called Roy called them out again. The crowd laughed. And finally Bob leaned around the tarp and said that his dog refused to come.

“Okay, then,” the man called Roy boomed into the microphone, “we have a disqualification. Dog says it doesn't ‘do it' in front of crowds.” The crowd howled with laughter. Bob begged and pulled; Queenie still held fast. I could not imagine a worse situation.

The other strange kid, the girl, now went out and her little dog also balked. But since it was so much smaller and less powerful than Queenie she was able to get it out onto the stage, where the crowd laughed and cheered. She then dragged—
dragged
—the poor little thing from one side of the stage to the other.

“Well,” said the man called Roy, “that dog certainly goes where you tell it to, don't it?” The crowd roared. All the others, Bob included, were laughing at the poor girl with the dog, her cheeks beet red with embarrassment. She tried to make the dog stay, and this time it did move with her when she walked away. The crowd roared with laughter again. It can't possibly get worse than this, I thought. It could, and did.

Finally the girl with the reluctant dog came back through the curtain formed by the tarpaulin, the crowd cheering her as she left. She seemed to me to be near tears.