Brute Strength (21 page)

Steve, Leah, and I, together with all five of our dogs, also got to the armory at noon, an hour and a half before the activities were scheduled to begin. Over breakfast, Gabrielle had announced her intention of surprising my father by returning home that evening instead of the next day. She'd gone so far as to pack her car for the trip and drive it to the armory so that she could head directly for Maine when the event ended, at four thirty. After she'd talked with Buck the previous afternoon, he'd called her back, then she'd called him back, and for all I knew, the progressively lovey-dovey murmuring (hers) and infatuated bellowing (his) had continued late into the night. In any case, she was eager to see him and had rejected our efforts to persuade her to spend one more night in Cambridge and leave for Maine on Sunday morning. In response to Steve's ever-so-rational argument that the trip would take five and a half or six hours and that Buck might be asleep when she arrived home, Gabrielle had replied, with coy defiance, ‘If he is, I'll just have to wake him up, won't I?'

The rainy weather was less than ideal for the long drive but perfect for the National Pet Week event. Opportunistic proselytizers that we dog people are, we were shamelessly pleased that the cancellation of plans for yard work, picnics, and outings to lakes, beaches, and theme parks would boost attendance at what was, in effect, our revival tent. All too often, efforts intended to educate the general public about responsible dog ownership are wonderfully effective in reaching responsible dog owners and no one else. A sunny day could've meant preaching to the choir.

Setting up for any sort of dog event is, I suspect, a lot like readying a church hall or a school gym for a festivity or fund-raiser, which is to say that it involves lugging around heavy, bulky objects that inevitably require arrangement and rearrangement. Because Rita, for all her virtues, was not the kind of person who happily hauls metal folding chairs, unfolds melamine banquet tables and baby gates, or drags around rolls of grubby rubber mats, she did not arrive at the armory until quarter past one, but when she did get there, she made herself useful by fastening my Malamute Rescue banner across the front of our assigned table, stacking my flyers in neat piles, and performing other such civilized tasks. Firebrand that he was, Willie remained crated in Rita's car, where he would stay until Steve got him. Consequently, when Max Crocker and Mukluk showed up, I was able to present them to Rita without whatever distraction Willie might have caused; and in the absence of the only potential hitch in my matchmaking, the introductions went well.

As is understood by everyone who shows dogs, first impressions count, so I was delighted to observe that Rita, Max, and Mukluk were well groomed and altogether fit for the breed ring, so to speak. Rita's red linen blazer and pressed jeans were, by her standards, the height of informality, and she was even wearing flats instead of her usual heels; but as always, her cap of hair looked freshly trimmed and highlighted, and her make-up was as perfect as it was subtle. Max, who had on chinos and a white sweater that I'd have bet was real cashmere, had the rugged, outdoorsy good looks I'd noticed when I'd visited him, and to my relief, he was wearing ordinary tan athletic shoes rather than Quinn Youngman-style hiking boots. As I knew from my considerable experience in matching up rescue dogs and adopters, it's one thing to contemplate the match and quite another actually to see the potential partners together in the flesh. In some cases, the person and the dog click as fast the shutter of a camera. In others, they need time to figure out whether they are made for each other. Now and then, it's obvious that they are not. When the pairing is wrong, it's usually the dog who lets me know pretty quickly. If a friendly, talkative malamute responds to a potential adopter by keeping his head down and silently sniffing the ground, he might as well come out and say, ‘Not this one! Sorry, but you've got to send this one home alone!'

To my relief, Mukluk greeted Rita with the melodious caroling that translates as:
Oh, I like you! I really like you a lot!
Constrained as they were by the repressive conventions of our inferior species, Rita and Max did not follow Mukluk's joyous example by blurting out the same happy sentiment about each other. Still, they said that they were pleased to meet each other, and Rita told Mukluk that she was glad to meet him, too, and took the paw he proffered, and before long Max and Rita were removing the banner from the front of the table and fastening it to the wall and unpacking the cartons of books that Steve and I were donating in the hope of attracting potential adopters to the booth. As I've mentioned, one of the books,
101 Ways to Cook Liver
, was a dog-treat cookbook and treatise on training with food that I'd written myself, and the other,
No More Fat Dogs
, was a doggy diet book that we'd co-authored. Thus neither was specifically about Alaskan malamutes except in the sense that malamutes are always convinced that they are on the verge of starvation and consequently are easy to train with goodies and highly skilled at persuading owners to overfeed them. Our own books were, however, what Steve and I had available to offer as freebies, so they were what Rita and Max arranged on the table in the hope of luring people in with the promise of something for nothing.

Leaving Rita, Max, and Mukluk together, I floated around helping here and there and seeing what was what. In addition to our Malamute Rescue booth, there were booths promoting the adoption of other breeds, including the Great Pyrenees and the keeshond, heaven help me, two breeds I am utterly crazy about, but we had five dogs now! When Molly visited we had six! Another dog was out of the question. So, no Pyr for me! No gorgeous giant white dog! As to a kees, damn! Keeshonden look so much like little fluffy malamutes, and the breed is so bright and cheerful, and . . . I dragged myself away to a particularly appealing booth that offered free canine-themed face painting, mainly but not exclusively for children. Ron, who'd taken over Isaac's job of running the whole event, sported a shiny black nose and curly black whiskers on his cheeks. Local pet-supply shops were ready to give away sample-size bags of dog and cat food; a local groomer with a white standard poodle in need of a trim was ready to demonstrate the art of clipping; and white baby gates marked off rings to be used for demos of obedience, freestyle, rally, and agility and for CGC testing.

In a far corner, Vanessa and Avery had spread out a greater quantity and variety of food than I'd ever before seen at an event like this one. Indeed, Vanessa, who'd just started training with the club, had entirely misconstrued the meaning of ‘refreshments'. Arrayed on two long tables were elaborate cheese and fruit platters, pans of lasagne on heating trays, big baskets of fried chicken, a large baked ham, bowls of green salad, and cakes, cupcakes, and cookies of all sorts, many decorated with stylized figures of dogs. Coffee perked in a big urn, and two metal tubs of ice held bottled water, little cartons of fruit juice, and cans of soft drinks. Ashamed though I was of my ingratitude, I couldn't help thinking that this incredible spread was so wildly overdone that when people told Vanessa, ‘Oh, you really shouldn't have,' they'd mean precisely what they said.

‘Vanessa,' I said. ‘Avery. This is incredible. You really shouldn't have!'

‘It's my treat,' Vanessa hastened to assure me. ‘I'm donating everything. And we all pitched in. We even put my father and Hatch to work washing lettuce and helping us transport it all. And Avery does love to cook. Really, we've had fun.'

‘Everything looks delicious. Thank you.'

‘In case you're wondering, I haven't forgotten Ulla. Her crate is back here. Hatch is out taking her for a little walk. They'll be back in a second. Doesn't Leah look spectacular today! Lovelier than ever.'

Following Vanessa's gaze, I turned to see Leah and Kimi in a nearby ring, where they were warming up for the agility demonstration by checking out the A-frame and the tunnel. As perhaps I need to explain, agility is a timed obstacle course, and of the many performance events, it's inevitably the great crowd-pleaser, in part because people love to watch dogs negotiate the A-frame, zip through tunnels, sail over jumps, and conquer the other obstacles, and in part because a race against time is always fun. Like Gabrielle, Leah had on a Cambridge Dog Training Club shirt, but whereas my stepmother's sweatshirt was pink and oversized, Leah's T-shirt was bright yellow and at least one size too small. The vivid color picked up the red-gold of Leah's long curls, and the shirt clung to her voluptuous bosom. I felt sure that the effect was unintended. Leah had a cavalier attitude toward laundry, which she did at our house. Having thrown her clothes into the dryer, she'd forget to remove the all-cotton items until they were, in my view, ruined. She dressed appropriately for shows and trials, but she was always more concerned about Kimi's appearance than about her own and tended to assume that others, too, would focus on the dog and ignore the handler. When she'd arrived at our house this morning, I'd been tempted to deliver one of my little lectures about sartorial respect for the sport, but Steve, having read my mind, had murmured, ‘Holly, let her alone. Between working and studying for exams, she's got other things to think about besides what she's got on, and at least she's recovered from that phase of wearing nothing but black.'

Vanessa continued. ‘Beauty and brains. She's the girl who's got everything.'

Was Avery by implication the girl who's got nothing? I strained not to look at her. On this rainy day, she wore a drab grey sweatshirt. Her face was expressionless, her life directionless. The contrast with Leah's colorful animation nearly made me want to point out Leah's petty faults:
Well, yes, she's beautiful and brilliant, and she's going to veterinary school, but she's a lousy laundress.

‘We think so,' I said, ‘but we're biased.' I ached to lift Avery's spirits but was afraid to open my mouth, probably because I was frightened of speaking the raw truth, which was that in almost every possible way, poor Avery suffered by comparison with Leah. At a guess, Avery felt herself to suffer by comparison with almost everyone. My rescue impulses are not limited to dogs.

For good or ill, the squeal of feedback from a microphone cut off the conversation. Clapping my hands over my ears, I turned to see that it was time to get ready for Meet the Breed.

‘We'll need Ulla now,' I told Vanessa. ‘Up there where all the chairs are. I'll see you there in a few minutes.'

Excusing myself, I hurried off. The point of Meet the Breed was to introduce the public to a variety of different breeds and thus to help people to make wise, educated choices when getting dogs. In the area I'd mentioned to Vanessa, a couple of dozen folding chairs were arranged in a big circle. Taped to the back of each chair was a sign with the name of a breed. The plan was this: when the handlers and dogs had taken their places, the announcer, Ron, would introduce a breed and go on to say a few words about its origins and characteristics as the representative or representatives were gaited around the ring. After each breed had had a turn, spectators would be free to meet the dogs and handlers close up. Our little obedience club did not, of course, provide a representative of every one of the hundreds of breeds in existence, but we did have dogs ranging in size from giant to toy, namely a Great Dane and a chihuahua, and we also had four or five mixed-breed dogs, including a darling terrier mix, Misty, who excelled in the sport of agility, and two pit bull mixes, Lewis and Clark, who were far less adventurous than their names suggested. In fact, they were certified therapy dogs whose explorations consisted of weekly visits to a children's hospital. Yes, those notorious pit bulls, sicked on sick kids! So much for stereotypes.

Because Steve, the dog hypnotist, was in charge of Rita's spunky representative of the Scottish terrier, Willie, Leah had agreed to handle India, the German shepherd dog, and I was handling Lady, whose timid temperament made her a less than ideal example of her breed but who was the only pointer the club could provide. The representatives of the Alaskan malamute were Ulla and Mukluk, but control-minded dog trainer that I am, I'd made sure that Lady and I would be seated next to the malamutes and their owners. As far as I knew, both malamutes had stable, sweet temperaments and would behave themselves when meeting the public, but if a problem arose, I wanted to be right on the spot. I'd also arranged to have Leah and India next to Lady and me, not because India, Miss Perfection, was likely to misbehave, but because I wanted to soothe Lady by surrounding her with trusted members of our family. Happily, the arrangement worked. When I led Lady to the Meet the Breed area, Leah and India were already there, and to my surprise, Lady seemed to interpret the situation as more or less a big family party. When I took the seat between Leah, on my right, and Vanessa, on my left, I kept a calming hand on Lady and felt none of the trembling that signals her tendency to turn to canine Jell-O.

‘Good girl, Lady,' I whispered. ‘You see? India and Leah are here, and Steve and Willie are over there with the other little dogs. You have so many friends here, don't you?'

‘Speaking of which,' said Vanessa, ‘where's Sammy?'

‘In his crate in the van.'

Turning to Max, on her left, Vanessa gushed, ‘Holly has the most beautiful malamute you've ever seen! Sammy, his name is. He takes my breath away. And he's just as good and gentle as he is gorgeous. He's Ulla's boyfriend. Isn't he Ulla? Who loves Sammy, huh?'

Ulla, far from showing any regret about Sammy's absence, flung herself to the floor at Mukluk's feet and then leaped to all fours, the better to give the bewildered Mukluk come-hither glances.

With commendable restraint, I said, ‘From the looks of things, I'd say that Ulla is a love-the-one-you're-with girl.' In fact, I was seething. So what if Mukluk had Dumbo ears, a collie head, mile-long legs, and all the rest! His doting owner, Max, was right there listening. Furthermore, in response to Ulla's provocation, the wonderfully calm Mukluk remained the perfect gentleman, as my admittedly gorgeous Sammy might not have done. Directing myself to Max, I said, ‘Mukluk is so mellow. You're really lucky.'