Lad: A Dog (13 page)

McGilead, therefore, had waved Lad aside while he judged the lesser dogs of his class, lest he be tempted to look too much at Lad and too little at them; and he rejoiced, at the last, to give honor where all honor was due.

Through dreary hours that day Lad lay disconsolate in his cell, nose between paws, while the stream of visitors flowed sluggishly past him. His memory of the Guest Law prevented him from showing his teeth when some of these passing humans paused in front of the compartment to pat him or consult his number in their catalogues. But he accorded not so much as one look—to say nothing of a handshake—to any of them.

A single drop of happiness was in his sorrow cup. He had, seemingly, done something that made both the Master and the Mistress very,
very
proud of him. He did not know just why they should be for he had done nothing clever. In fact, he had been at his dullest. But they
were
proud of him—undeniably proud, and this made him glad, through all his black despondency.

Even the collie man seemed to regard him with more approval than before—not that Lad cared at all; and two or three exhibitors came over for a special look at him. From one of these exhibitors the Mistress learned of a dog-show rule that was wholly new to her.

She was told that the winning dog of each and every class was obliged to return later to the ring to compete in what was known as the Winners' class—a contest whose entrants included every class victor from Novice to Open. Briefly, this special competition was to determine which class winner was the best collie in the whole list of winners and, as such, entitled to a certain number of “points” toward a championship. There were eight of these winners.

One or two such world-famed champions as Grey Mist and Southport Sample were in the show “for exhibition only.” But the pick of the remaining leaders must compete in the winners' class—Sunnybank Lad among them. The Master's heart sank at this news.

“I'm sorry!” he said. “You see, it's one thing to win as a Novice against a bunch of untried dogs, and quite another to compete against the best dogs in the show. I wish we could get out of it.”

“Never mind!” answered the Mistress. “Laddie has won his ribbon. They can't take that away from him. There's a silver cup for the Winners' class, though. I wish there had been one for the Novices.”

The day wore on. At last came the call for “Winners!” And for the second time poor Lad plodded reluctantly into the ring with the Mistress. But now, instead of novice dogs, he was confronted by the cream of colliedom.

Lad's heartsick aspect showed the more intensely in such company. It grieved the Mistress bitterly to see his disconsolate air. She thought of the three days and nights to come —the nights when she and the Master could not be with him, when he must lie listening to the babel of yells and barks all around, with nobody to speak to him except some neglectful and sleepy attendant. And for the sake of a blue ribbon she had brought this upon him!

The Mistress came to a sudden and highly unsportsmanlike resolution.

Again the dogs paraded the ring. Again the judge studied them from between half-shut eyes. But this time he did not wave Lad to one side. The Mistress had noted, during the day, that McGilead had always made known his decisions by first laying his hand on the victor's head. And she watched breathless for such a gesture.

One by one the dogs were weeded out until only two remained. Of these two, one was Lad—the Mistress' heart banged crazily—and the other was Champion Coldstream Guard. The Champion was a grand dog, gold-and-white of hue, perfect of coat and line, combining all that was best in the old and new styles of collies. He carried his head nobly aloft with no help from the choke collar. His “tulip” ears hung at precisely the right curve.

Lad and Coldstream Guard were placed shoulder to shoulder on the platform. Even the Mistress could not fail to contrast her pet's woebegone aspect with the Champion's alert beauty.

“Lad!” she said, very low, and speaking with slow intentness as McGilead compared the two. “Laddie, we're going home. Home!
Home,
Lad!”

Home! At the word, a thrill went through the great dog. His shoulders squared. Up went his head and his ears. His dark eyes fairly glowed with eagerness as he looked expectantly up at the Mistress.
Home!

Yet, despite the transformation, the other was the finer dog—from a mere show viewpoint. The Mistress could see he was. Even the new uptilt of Lad's ears could not make those ears so perfect in shape and attitude as were the Champion's.

With almost a gesture of regret McGilead laid his hand athwart Coldstream Guard's head. The Mistress read the verdict, and she accepted it.

“Come, Laddie, dear,” she said tenderly. “You're second, anyway, Reserve Winner. That's
something.”

“Wait!” snapped McGilead.

The judge was seizing one of Champion Coldstream Guard's supershapely ears and turning it backward. His sensitive fingers, falling on the dog's head in token of victory, had encountered an odd stiffness in the curve of the ear. Now he began to examine that ear, and then the other, and thereby he disclosed a most clever bit of surgical bandaging.

Neatly crisscrossed, inside each of the Champion's ears, was a succession of adhesive-plaster strips cut thin and running from tip to orifice. The scientific applying of these strips had painfully imparted to the prick-ears (the dog's one flaw) the perfect tulip shape so desirable as a show quality. Champion Coldstream Guard's silken ears could not have had other than ideal shape and posture if he had wanted them to—while that crisscross of sticky strips held them in position!

Now, this was no new trick—the ruse that the Champion's handlers had employed. Again and again in bench shows, it had been employed upon bull terriers. A year or two ago a woman was ordered from the ring, at the Garden, when plaster was found inside her terrier's ears, but seldom before had it been detected in a collie—in which a prick-ear usually counts as a fatal blemish.

McGilead looked at the Champion. Long and searchingly he looked at the man who held the Champion's leash—and who fidgeted grinningly under the judge's glare. Then McGilead laid both hands on Lad's great honest head—almost as in benediction.

“Your dog wins, Madam,” he said, “and while it is no part of a judge's duty to say so, I am heartily glad. I won't insult you by asking if he is for sale, but if ever you have to part with him—”

He did not finish, but abruptly gave the Mistress the “Winning Class” rosette.

And now, as Lad left the ring, hundreds of hands were put out to pat him. All at once he was a celebrity.

Without returning the dog to the bench, the Mistress went directly to the collie man.

“When do they present the cups?” she asked.

“Not until Saturday night, I believe,” said the man. “I congratulate you both on—”

“In order to win his cup, Lad will have to stay in this—this inferno—for three days and nights longer?”

“Of course. All the dogs-”

“If he doesn't stay, he won't get the cup?”

“No. It would go to the Reserve, I suppose, or to—”

“Good!” declared the Mistress in relief. “Then he won't be defrauding anyone, and they can't rob him of his two ribbons because I have those.”

“What do you mean?” asked the puzzled collie man.

But the Master understood—and approved.

“Good!” he said. “I wanted all day to suggest it to you, but I didn't have the nerve. Come around to the Exhibitors' Entrance. I'll go ahead and start the car.”

“But what's the idea?” queried the collie man in bewilderment.

“The idea,” replied the Mistress, “is that the cup can go to any dog that wants it. Lad's coming
home.
He knows it, too. Just look at him. I promised him he should go home. We can get there by dinnertime, and he has a day's fast to make up for.”

“But,” expostulated the scandalized collie man, “if you withdraw your dog like that, the Association will never allow you to exhibit him at its shows again.”

“The Association can have a pretty silver cup,” retorted the Mistress, “to console it for losing Lad. As for exhibiting him again—well, I wouldn't lose these two ribbons for a hundred dollars, but I wouldn't put my worst enemy's dog to the torture of winning them over again—for a thousand. Come along, Lad, we're going back home.”

At the talisman word, Lad broke silence for the first time in all that vilely wretched day. He broke it with a series of thunderously trumpeting barks that quite put to shame the puny noise-making efforts of every other dog in the show.

FOUR OF US WERE DISCUSSING ABSTRACT THEMES, IDLY, AS men will, after a good dinner and in front of a country-house fire. Someone asked:

“What is the saddest sight in everyday life? I don't mean the most gloomily tragic, but the saddest.”

A frivolous member of the fireside group cited a helpless man between two quarreling women. A sentimentalist said:

“A lost child in a city street.”

The dog master contradicted:

“A lost
dog
in a city street.”

Nobody agreed with him, of course; but that was because none of the others chanced to know dogs—to know their psychology—their souls, if you prefer. The dogman was right. A lost dog in a city street is the very saddest and most hopeless sight in all a city street's abounding everyday sadness.

A man between two quarreling women is an object piteous enough, heaven knows. Yet his plight verges too much on the grotesque to be called sad.

A lost child?—No. Let a child stand in the middle of a crowded sidewalk and begin to cry. In one minute fifty amateur and professional rescuers have flocked to the Lost One's aid. An hour, at most, suffices to bring it in touch with its frenzied guardians.

A lost dog?—Yes. No succoring cohort surges to the relief. A gang of boys, perhaps, may give chase, but assuredly not in kindness. A policeman seeking a record for “mad dog” shooting—a professional dogcatcher in quest of his dirty fee—these will show marked attention to the wanderer. But, again, not in kindness.

A dog, at some turn in the street, misses his master—doubles back to where the human demigod was last seen—darts ahead once more to find him, through the press of other human folk—halts, hesitates, begins the same maneuvers all over again; then stands, shaking in panic at his utter aloneness.

Get the look in his eyes, then—you who do not mind seeing such things—and answer, honestly: Is there anything sadder on earth? All this; before the pursuit of boys and the fever of thirst and the final knowledge of desolation have turned him from a handsome and prideful pet into a slinking outcast.

Yes, a lost dog is the saddest thing that can meet the gaze of a man or woman who understands dogs. As perhaps my story may help to show—or perhaps not.

Lad had been brushed and bathed, daily, for a week, until his mahogany-and-snow coat shone. All this, at The Place, far up in the North Jersey hinterland and all to make him presentable for the Westminster Kennel Show at New York's Madison Square Garden. After which, his two gods, the Mistress and the Master, took him for a thirty-mile ride in The Place's only car, one morning.

The drive began at The Place—the domain where Lad had ruled as King among the lesser folk for so many years. It ended at Madison Square Garden, where the annual four-day dog show was in progress.

You have read how Lad fared at that Show—how, at the close of the first day, when he had two victories to his credit, the Mistress had taken pity on his misery and had decreed that he should be taken home, without waiting out the remaining three days of torture ordeal.