Gone to the Dogs (4 page)

All this is to say that at seven o’clock on Thursday evening, when Hope and I were at the desk at the Cambridge Armory checking in people and dogs for Vince’s beginners’ class, Rowdy was on the floor behind our chairs, securely tethered to the bleachers that run along that wall of the battered old armory, but Hope didn’t happen to have a dog with her and was hence free to concentrate on rescuing new handlers from their subprenovice dogs.

“Big group,” Hope said gleefully to me, not only
because obedience enthusiasts are as delighted as are any other true believers to witness a high turnout of converts, but also because beginners’ classes, inevitably larger than advanced classes, provide the financial backbone of any dog-training club. Our club happens to have a lot of money, but we still like to feel self-sufficient.

A newcomer approached the desk, a pretty, formally dressed dark-haired woman with a lively young Dalmatian bitch bounding around at the end of a leash. The woman’s English had a light Spanish accent. “This school is for beginning dogs?” she asked tentatively.

“Yes,” I said. “She hasn’t had any training before? This is her first time?”

I thought the woman was going to laugh. She shook her head. “Samantha is a very spoiled girl. She has her own chair, only for her. And my husband wants to sit in this chair.”

Even though I explained that basic obedience doesn’t exactly dwell on the subject of vacating chairs, the newcomer remained interested. While Hope took temporary charge of Samantha, the woman wrote her name and address, as well as Samantha’s name and breed, on our registration form, and then wrote a check for fifty dollars, our fee for the entire eight-week beginners’ course. After that, Hope and I helped register a German shorthaired pointer, a couple of mixed breeds, and what both Hope and I took to be a puli mix, an outstandingly cute medium-size, brownish-black dog with a long, curly, fluffy coat.

I’m always curious about dogs, of course. “He’s, uh, puli and …?” I asked the owners, a pleasant-looking father and son, both of whom, incidentally,
had short, straight hair and resembled one another, not the dog. People like Jackie Miner are the exception. The true identicality of most dogs and their owners lies only in their souls.

Hope made a guess: “With some Portuguese water dog?”

The father and son both smiled, and the father said proudly, “Actually, he’s a Charlee Bear dog. Supposed to look like a toy bear. It’s a new breed.”

And, once I knew what a Charlee Bear dog is supposed to look like, this one did: soft, fluffy, and cuddly, a stuffed animal come to life. And Hope was right: Although we didn’t know it at the time, there is some Portuguese water dog in the breed.

The father took a seat on the battered bleachers, and the straight-haired boy led his curly-coated dog to the dirty rubber mat stretched on the floor along the opposite side of the big, shabby hall, where the two of them found a place in the chaotic line of handlers and dogs, all kinds of dogs, giants, toys, purebreds, mixes, crosses, near-puppies, and the inevitable, unmistakable adolescent males whose naive, trusting owners had put off obedience training until puberty surprised them even more than it did their half-grown pups.

Just when I’d given up on my lone ranger, he poked his head around one of the swinging doors between the hall and the front entry, ran his eyes over everything, and caught mine. I waved, and then, because he looked half ready to bolt, I got up and went to the doors. Well, never mind about the man.

In the unflattering light of the unshaded overhead bulb in the unprepossessing armory entry glowed a dog, God, what a dog, maybe eighty pounds, with a tawny red-gold coat, golden-brown eyes, a
broad head, a black nose, and a long-legged, muscular, four-square build. Here I saw a dog who didn’t belong to any particular breed, but who obviously could have served as the standard-defining progenitor of …? Let’s call it the Royal Golden Shepherd.

I held a hand out to the dog, who sniffed it curiously. Once he’d given me tacit permission, I ran my palms over the thick ruff around his neck. “Bear, right?” I said.

“Bear,” said John with the expression of apologetic pride you see on the faces of plain, dull parents who’ve produced a glittering, beauty-contest-winner baby.

“Hey,” I said, “the class is already starting, so you better get registered. You’re here for beginners’, right? It’s fifty dollars for eight weeks, and then after that, you can join if you want, and it’s only three dollars a lesson, so it’s a good deal. Anyhow, see if you like it. You need to go to the desk over there.”

John and Bear headed toward Hope, and I followed, almost afraid to watch Bear. If he had an awkward, clumsy gait or turned out to be cow-hocked, I didn’t want to see it, but I needn’t have worried. He moved like a prince.

Then, damn it, as I was about to make sure that John felt as welcome with Bear as he’d have been with a national-specialty winner purebred, Hope, obviously thinking of the Charlee Bear dog, glanced at Bear and said pertly to John, “And I’ll bet this one only looks like a shepherd mix, right?” I glared at Hope. “But he actually belongs to the rarest breed in the world.”

The muscles in John’s face tightened. In spite of the presence of lots of dogs of no particular breed, he
must have felt taken aback, sure that I’d lied to him about the club welcoming everyone. In lieu of wrapping my hands around Hope’s muzzle and clamping her jaws shut, a procedure at which I’m fairly deft, with dogs at least, I did some fast talking: “We just had a Charlee Bear dog, and neither of us knew what it was, because it’s a new breed, and we both thought it was a mix, so Hope’s just kidding, right? This is John. He’s the guy I was telling you about who rescued Kimi the other day, when she ran into the traffic, and this is Bear, and they’re starting with Vince, so we better get them signed up. Also, he wants to know about all-American C.D.’s. Do we have a copy of
N.E.O.N
. around somewhere?” I turned to John.
“N.E.O.N
. is
New England Obedience News
. They give mixed-breed titles or whatever. Anyway, never mind, you can register after class.”

That ludicrous tactic is occasionally worth a try with dogs, too. John probably didn’t even know what a C.D. is—Companion Dog title, grammar school diploma—but, then, I’d probably been jabbering too fast for him to catch anything else, either. Or maybe he never intended to leave. At any rate, he unzipped the same faded khaki jacket he’d worn on the day of Kimi’s rescue, tossed it on the bleachers, slipped a metal training collar on Bear, hooked it to a standard six-foot leather lead, and joined the parade of handlers heeling—or, in most cases, failing to heel—their dogs in a big loop around the hall.

“Did I put my foot in it?” said Hope, her gentle face chagrined. “Or did I put my foot in it? Sorry about that. It is a shepherd mix, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I think so. With some Saint Bernard somewhere?” I was guessing aloud, half to myself. “The color’s a little like a golden, but I really don’t
see any golden there. Mastiff? And there’s got to be some northern breed. Siberian, maybe? Malamute? His coat’s thick.”

After that, we sorted through the registration forms and talked about the other new dogs. I had an admiring eye on a golden retriever bitch of about six months, a fabulous obedience prospect, but Hope misinterpreted my stare and said something you hear all the time about perfection, namely, “Look at that! It’s totally disgusting!” The yapping of a … Well, to avoid hard feelings, let’s skip the breed. As I was saying, one high-volume, nonstop pubescent male drowned Vince out, and the new handlers kept looking at one another and stopping to try to catch his commands. A few of the quick ones discovered the trick of watching the two experienced handlers, club members with new dogs, who couldn’t hear Vince, either, but who’d taken so many of his classes that they usually knew what came next. The rank beginners with big, rambunctious dogs had all come dressed in wool sweaters and were sweating profusely. What did they expect? Obedience
is
a sport, after all. One dog had an accident, the handler pretended not to notice, and Vince made him clean it up anyway.

Bear distinguished himself from all the other dogs except the super golden and one black Lab by heeling really quite decently and by ignoring what’s usually the irresistible provocation of the young, unneutered male dogs. John clearly had the makings of a good handler. For one thing, he didn’t do all that shifting around, hand flapping, head tilting, and jiggling you usually see. In fact, he had natural talent. I’d seen it before. My cousin Leah learned to handle
like a pro in practically no time. The Bachs and music?

Hope noticed it, too. “Why’d you tell him to come to beginners’? You should’ve told to him to come at eight.”

“I asked, and he said he hadn’t trained a dog before, so what was I supposed to tell him? Maybe he’s one of those people that, you know, go to the library and get a book on dog training and actually do what it says.”

“Anyway, never mind him,” Hope said eagerly. “So tell me everything about Oscar Patterson.”

“You know as much as I do,” I lied. “Probably more. A week ago Sunday, he was there. A week ago Monday, he wasn’t.”

“You haven’t asked what’s-his-name? Steve’s new vet? It would’ve been the first thing I asked him.”

“I’m going to. I have to. I’m supposed to be doing some kind of story, not about what happened to him, necessarily, but, basically, anything. What he was like, that kind of thing, and something about suspicions of foul play, or did he just decide to take off? And so forth.”

“Well, don’t believe everything you hear,” Hope said. “If you ask me, some of these women just wish they’d been the one he ran off with, and if it can’t be them, they at least want it to be someone.”

“Well, Patterson did sort of have that reputation,” I said. “It was part of his image.”

“What’s this guy’s name? The new vet?”

“Lee Miner.” Then I tacked on an assurance that he was a full-fledged human being: “He and his wife have a Scottie.”

After we’d both expressed admiration for anyone
trying to obedience train a terrier, any kind of terrier, Hope resumed her efforts to pump me about Lee Miner. At first, she insisted that I must know more about Patterson’s disappearance than she did. When I’d convinced her that she was wrong, she filled me in. “Somebody brought a dog in to his clinic, and it didn’t make it, and the owner was yelling at Patterson, and probably Patterson was yelling back at him. This vet, Miner, has got to know about it. Maybe he was even there. Ask him. Anyway, look. You have enough dogs, and sooner or later, something happens, some vet does something, some jerk, and you could kill him for it, right?”

She stopped. Steve Delaney had just arrived with his shepherd, India. He was hanging around near the door with the other advanced people, who were waiting for the beginners’ class to end. By the way, if you think that golden retrievers are the only disgustingly perfect obedience dogs, you should see India.

“Some
vets,” Hope added, “not all of them.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. You remember when Ron had Vixen spayed?” I said. Ron Coughlin is our club treasurer. “And he knew something was really, really wrong, and his vet kept telling him to quit worrying, it was all normal? And then, sometime in the middle of the night, he took her to Angell, and, of course, he was right. She had a bad infection.” Angell Memorial, which is run by the MSPCA, has a twenty-four-hour emergency room. “If she’d died? You know, his vet never even saw her. He just talked to Ron on the phone. Well, if she’d died, Ron wouldn’t’ve killed him, but he’d have felt like it. I mean, obviously, she lived, but that’s how he felt anyway.”

“Ron didn’t do anything, did he?”

“No. He changed vets, but other than that, I think he just wanted to forget it. But that was different. That guy was really a lousy vet, and everybody’d been telling Ron all these horror stories about him, so when it happened, Ron must’ve felt it was partly his own fault, for not listening to people. But Patterson is supposed to be good. Or was. That’s what Steve told me.”

“Somebody could blame him anyway. When you lose a dog? God, it’s so awful. And if you thought it was the vet’s fault? Anybody’d kill for that. It’s only human. You’re not in your right mind.”

Vinnie, my last golden, died gently. Even so, Hope had unintentionally tapped my permanent grief. To avoid thinking about Vinnie, I said, “Let’s get these people checked in. I want to get Rowdy warmed up.”

“Go ahead. I’ll do it,” Hope offered as the beginners’ class started to break up. “There aren’t all that many.”

I slipped Rowdy’s training collar over his head and snapped on his lead. He rose, shook himself all over, and started singing out a long series of happy
woo-woo
’s. Then he caught sight of Bear dutifully approaching us at John’s side. As usual, Rowdy barged forward to initiate a ritual exchange of sniffs. I kept a vigilant watch, because I’ll swear that to other male dogs, Rowdy had always smelled exactly ten months old, which is when testosterone levels peak. He could be sitting squarely at my side with his sweet eyes locked on my face, but the other males weren’t fooled. All they ever noticed was that hormonal reek.

But Rowdy and Bear performed the ritual peacefully. Bear must’ve smelled of something besides testosterone, some friendly hormone that blasts
the nostrils of other dogs with an odiferous message that says: “Hey! I’m a nice guy.” Farfetched? Let’s say that Rowdy and Bear liked each other.

While I was answering John’s questions about obedience titles for mixed-breed dogs, Steve came over. I introduced him to John. Human males don’t have to sniff; they read testosterone levels in each other’s eyes. I suspect that they may even see sharp digital printouts invisible to women. Anyway, if they’d had to rely on their noses, Steve’s wouldn’t have picked up a trace of whiskey on John, and, like Rowdy and Bear, each male seemed to decide that the other was okay. Steve took John to meet Ron Coughlin, who knows all about titles for mixed breeds because Vixen has an all-American U.D. from
N.E.O.N
. Foreigner? A Utility Dog title from
N.E.O.N
. Remember?
New England Obedience News
. You’ll be fluent in no time. I could teach for Berlitz.