Chow Down (23 page)

M
onday morning, four thirty
AM
arrived all too soon.

Even that close to the longest day of the year it was fully dark outside when my alarm sounded; the sun wouldn't be rising for at least another hour and a half. As I climbed out of bed, Sam rolled over sleepily, opened one eye, and waved good-bye in my general direction. So much for sympathy.

Even Faith, who normally loves to accompany me on outings, was loathe to drag herself out of bed. Or in her case, off the foot of the bed. Showered and dressed, I called to her quietly from the doorway to Davey's room. Like Sam, the Poodle opened her eyes but didn't stir.

“Come on,” I whispered so as not to disturb my sleeping son. “We have things to do.”

Since I'd devoted several hours the previous evening to clipping, bathing, and blowing her dry, I knew Faith understood that we had somewhere to go. What she didn't understand apparently was why we needed to leave in the middle of the night.

That made two of us, I thought grumpily.

When I called a second time, Faith rose slowly and stretched. Looking thoroughly put upon, she hopped off the bed and padded to my side. “Nobody ever told you being famous was going to be easy,” I muttered, leading the way down the stairs.

Ten minutes later we were on the road. Traffic was light at that hour, or at least not as bad as it would be shortly. The sun rose while we were crossing the Triboro Bridge and the Manhattan skyline looked serene and beautiful bathed in an early morning glow. Faith, still looking faintly disgruntled and snoozing with her nose between her paws on the seat beside me, missed the whole thing. Then again, since dogs score pretty high on the Inner Peace scale, she probably didn't need the lift as much as I did.

I left the Volvo in a parking garage two blocks away from the midtown address I'd been given, and Faith and I presented ourselves to the studio receptionist with a few minutes to spare. The streets and sidewalks below had been mostly quiet, but the tenth floor workplace was a hub of sound and activity. Everyone looked wide awake and incredibly busy. They had probably all been up for hours.

The receptionist signed us in, then turned us over to an efficient looking assistant. That young woman checked off our names—Faith's and mine both, I saw—on a clipboard she was carrying. Then she escorted us down a hallway to the green room which, I noticed immediately, wasn't green at all.

About half the participants in our segment had already arrived. Dorothy, sitting next to a table filled with breakfast items, looked as bleary-eyed as I felt. Bill and Allison, side by side on a couch with Ginger sitting between them, appeared predictably chipper. Chris Hovick, nursing a tall cup of coffee, looked rumpled and glum. Cindy and Doug were conferring quietly about something in one corner of the room. Unfortunately their whispered voices didn't carry.

I waited only long enough for Faith to touch noses with the other dogs, then made a beeline for the coffee. Faith lifted her muzzle, sniffing the air in front of the table and scoping out the food choices. The selection consisted of bagels and muffins. No dog biscuits.

Coffee in hand, I went and sat next to Dorothy. Faith turned a small circle, then lay down at my feet. “What's that about?” I asked under my breath, nodding toward Doug and Cindy.

“I don't know. Simone was in here a few minutes ago. She said something to Doug that didn't make him happy, then she turned around and left again. Doug called Cindy over and they've been talking ever since.”

“What about Ben and Brando?”

“I haven't seen them yet. But you know Ben, he's always running late.”

“Lisa and Yoda?”

Dorothy chuckled. “No sign of them either. Maybe our little group of five finalists just got reduced to three. The odds are improving every minute, aren't they?”

She reached down and gave MacDuff a cheerful pat. The Scottie gazed up at his owner adoringly. Chris sipped his coffee and regarded them both over the lip of his cup with a stern expression. I guessed I wasn't the only one in the room who wasn't a morning person.

“Chris?” Doug beckoned to the advertising director.

Chris rose slowly from his seat. He looked like he'd prefer to do almost anything rather than join his fellow judges, but he set down his cup and ambled in their direction.

A large monitor on one wall had been showing only a blank screen, but now another assistant ducked into the room and turned it on. The volume came up, and I heard the morning show's theme music begin to play. Rob Dalton and Darlene Minnick were the show's cohosts. Both were poised and perky, with a natural, unaffected manner that went over well at the crack of dawn. The program opened with Rob and Darlene sitting side by side behind a news desk, trading jaunty banter.

The assistant remained standing beside the monitor. He waited a beat until all our eyes turned his way. “Everybody good?” he asked.

Dutifully we all nodded.

“Excellent! Someone will be along shortly to escort each of you upstairs to hair and makeup. In the meantime, just make yourselves comfortable and enjoy the show.” He dashed out through the open doorway and disappeared.

“They're going to do our hair and makeup,” Dorothy said happily. “Imagine that! I wish I'd remembered to set my VCR this morning before I left home.”

“We did,” said Bill. “We can make an extra copy for you if you want. This show is going to be Ginger's television debut. There was no way we were going to miss having a tape of that.”

“MacDuff has been on TV lots of times,” Dorothy replied. “Westminster and the other top shows get plenty of coverage. But still it's exciting . . . And of course I'd love to have a tape of this appearance, seeing as it will most likely be the beginning of our new career.”

Oh really? I thought. Bill and Allison looked surprised as well. Chris, who should have been listening to what Doug and Cindy were saying, turned his head and glared in Dorothy's direction.

“I guess it will be a beginning for one of us,” Allison said pointedly.

Dorothy looked unruffled by the correction. If she was trying to psych out the competition, her tactics seemed to be having the desired effect. Across the way, Doug was now staring hard at Chris, wondering, no doubt, how he'd lost his subordinate's attention. This room had more undercurrents than a Jacuzzi.

Suddenly I realized that pictures of each of our dogs—the ones we'd submitted with our contest entries—were flashing by on the TV screen. Darlene was speaking and we all went silent to hear what she had to say.

“Coming up in our last half hour is a special treat for all you dog lovers out there,” she said in a voice primed with bubbly enthusiasm. “I would say that includes just about everyone, wouldn't you, Rob?”

“I certainly would!” the cohost replied. “I know it includes me, and today we have some really special canines for you to enjoy. Five dogs—Brando, Ginger, Faith, MacDuff, and Yoda—have been selected from among thousands of entries nationwide to be the finalists in the ‘All Dogs Are Champions' contest sponsored by Chow Down Dog Food. The winning entry will be the new spokesdog—” Rob paused for a well-rehearsed chuckle—“for that excellent product.”

“And here's the best part!” Darlene chirped. “The lucky winner of the contest will be chosen by you, our discriminating viewers. After watching the program today and seeing each of the dogs interact with our pet expert, Darren Abernathy, all you have to do is log on to the Champions web site and vote for your favorite.”

“So be sure to stay tuned for the entire show,” Rob finished up. “We know you won't want to miss a thing!”

The screen went dark as the network went to commercial. It took us all a moment to adjust to the fact that the introduction to our segment was over. Then Doug's face creased in a broad grin.

“That went well,” he said heartily.

“Top-notch,” Cindy agreed.

“They mentioned the name of the product, the contest,
and
the company,” said Chris. “And that was only the initial promo. This is going to be excellent.”

They were so busy congratulating themselves that they didn't seem to realize that their three contestants hadn't said a word. Finally I was the one who broke the silence.

“I thought the judging committee was going to be picking the winner of the contest,” I said.

“Yes, well . . .” Doug slid a wary look our way. Until right that moment, it hadn't occurred to him that there might be a problem. He lifted his hands and rubbed them together, playing for time. “Of course. That's right.”

“That's not what Darlene said,” Bill pointed out.

The three committee members glanced at one another. Like maybe they were trying to formulate an instant plan.

“She must have been reading the wrong copy,” Cindy said quickly.

“I don't think so,” Dorothy muttered. “She got all our names right.”

“But she was mistaken about the other thing,” said Chris. “You know how it is with live TV. Sometimes stuff gets mixed up.”

Bill and Allison didn't look convinced either. Instead we were all digesting this last-minute change. It added a whole new set of parameters to the game we'd been playing, and we all knew it.

“It'll be easy enough to figure out when we get home,” I said. “All we have to do is log on to the Champions site ourselves and see if there's away to vote.”

“Right . . .” Doug said. His voice sounded strained. “About that . . .”

“Yes?” Allison prompted.

Ginger looked up at her owner and cocked an ear. If Dorothy and I had been dogs, we would have done the same.

“I imagine you might see something on the web site about voting for your favorite finalist,” Chris said slowly. “But it's not what you think.”

“What is it, then?” I asked.

“The popular vote is only going to act as a guideline,” said Doug. “It's something we'll take into consideration when we formulate our choice. It won't be the entire deciding factor, just another facet of the competition.”

“After all,” Cindy said with a laugh, “if we did that, we'd lose control of the outcome. It's not as though we can let just
anyone
pick our new Chow Down spokesdog for us.”

I didn't agree. The judges had already narrowed the choice down to five, presumably deserving, finalists. It didn't look to me as though the public could go very far wrong. But that wasn't how the situation had been presented to us. And it now seemed quite possible that all the energy we'd expended trying to impress the committee over the last several weeks was going to count for nothing.

“It's our decision,” Chris said firmly. “Really. We wouldn't have it any other way.”

“Then maybe you'd like to make that clear before we appear before a national audience,” Bill Redding commented.

“Good idea,” said Doug. He looked happy to grab an excuse to make an exit. “I'll go do that.”

No sooner had he passed through the doorway than Ben and Brando came walking in. The actor paused to survey the room. His eyes slid over each of us in turn.

“Hey guys! Great morning, isn't it?” he said cheerfully. “It looks like most of the gang's already here. Did I miss anything important?”

 

The screen lit back up as the morning show continued. One by one we were escorted up to the eleventh floor to have a layer of on-air makeup applied, and to have our hair combed out by the studio's stylist. Even she was impressed with my new haircut. Terry would get a big kick out of that; I made a mental note to tell him about it later.

While I was gone from the green room, Dorothy and the Reddings had filled Ben in on the latest developments. Unlike the other contestants, he relished the idea of leaving his fate up to a popular vote.

“You guys just don't have enough faith in your dogs,” he said, dropping a hand down to scratch the top of his Boxer's tight skull. “Brando here, he's a star and he knows it. I don't mind letting America choose. I'm confident that they'll pick the right dog.”

Ben's bravado had a certain appeal. Both Chris and Cindy looked impressed with his assessment. That was reason enough to keep the rest of us from arguing with him and we went back to watching the show.

Doug had yet to reappear; I imagined he was probably checking with the producer about our segment. Simone had passed through briefly, greeted each of us, and then left again. There still had been no sign of Lisa and Yoda.

I glanced at my watch. Time was passing rapidly. Our turn would come up shortly. Earlier I'd been enjoying having a behind-the-scenes look at a live TV show, but now my stomach was beginning to quiver with nerves.

Resting beside me, Faith looked composed as always. I knew she'd do a good job. I just hoped I wouldn't fall flat on my face.

“Does anyone know where the ladies' room is?” I asked.

“Down the hall and to the left,” said Allison. She looked as though she might be feeling some butterflies, too. “Do you want me to keep an eye on Faith while you're gone?”

“Thanks, that would be great.”

I left the Poodle in a down-stay and went and attended to business. Heading back a few minutes later, I decided not to take the direct route. So far, all I'd seen of the television studio was the reception area and the green room. They were interesting but not nearly as exciting as getting a sneak preview of the actual set would be.

There were plenty of people in the hallway but everyone seemed intent on carrying out their duties. Nobody paid any attention as I pushed through the heavy door that led to the area where the show was being filmed. I slipped quietly into the cavernous room and hung back in the shadows against the wall.