Gone to the Dogs (8 page)

“What happened,” Vince continued, “is that Ray and Lynne sold a show pup to some people in New Hampshire, and he did a lot of winning, and they never had any trouble with him. The dog was great with kids, nice around the house, all that. Then these people heard about this off-leash training, and I guess that sounded like a good idea, and instead of asking Ray and Lynne, they just sent him to Brenner, and when they got him back, it was like they had a different dog. He flew at the woman, then he bit some kid, and then he really did a job on the guy’s face. Patterson was their vet, and he’d known the dog all along, and when he heard the story, he figured it out, and he went to Brenner’s place and socked him one in the jaw.”

“Good for him,” I said.

“So what happened to the dog?” Ron asked.

“Ask Ray,” Vince said. “Last thing I heard, they still had him. This just happened, maybe a month ago, six weeks, something like that. These people in New Hampshire didn’t want the dog anymore and, of course, Ray and Lynne took him back, and what are they going to do with him?”

“Jackie Miner took a dog to Brenner,” I said. “She had some kind of bad experience. I’m not sure what. Anyway, she had the sense not to go back. I think I’ll ask her about it.”

“The
Dog’s Life
spotlight team, huh?” Ron said.

That’s what the
Boston Globe
’s exposé people are called, the spotlight team. If you’re familiar with politics here in Massachusetts—the Vote Early and Vote Often State—you know that there’s usually plenty to expose, and when there isn’t, the indomitable spotlight team does anyway, or that’s what people say.

“Dog’s Life
publishes some anti-pet-shop articles,” I said in defense of my employer. “And a few opinion pieces about how the AKC isn’t doing anything to close down puppy mills. I could do something about what to watch out for if you go to one of these dog behavior consultants. Some of our readers are new owners or sort of casual owners. They want to be responsible, but they don’t necessarily know how. That’s one reason they subscribe. If their dogs might be abused, they want to be warned.”

After that, Ron and Roz helped me to put out the desserts and coffee. I was really glad that Rita and Kevin weren’t there, and although I’d been a little disappointed that John had never arrived, I decided that it was probably for the best, especially when Hope used one of the paper coffee cups and a kitchen chair to demonstrate how to collect a urine specimen from a dog and then added cream and sugar and drank from the same cup. Rita and Kevin would’ve turned puce. I wasn’t sure about John. As it was, though, everyone had a good time and stayed late.

While I was helping the Miners to find their
coats, I remembered to ask Lee about the dog that died the night Oscar Patterson vanished. “Cliff Bourque’s dog?” I said. “Is that right?”

“Yes,” he said as he carefully zipped his parka and did up all of those snaps and Velcro fasteners around the neck that most people ignore.

“I heard it was a sled dog,” I said. “I wondered what kind. Because I have malamutes?”

“Oh, it wasn’t a malamute,” he said.

“No, I heard it wasn’t,” I said.

“Lee, she already knows what it wasn’t,” Jackie insisted. “She wants to know what it
was.”

“Well, I’m not sure I remember exactly,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“No, I guess not,” I said.

When everyone had left, I put all the food away and starting gathering up crumpled napkins, paper cups, and other trash. As I was snuffing candles and picking up paper plates in the living room, I noticed something odd about the Christmas tree. My family tradition decrees that ornaments belong out of the reach of puppies, but otherwise they go wherever you happen to want to hang them. The dogs will jostle the tree and knock it over a few times, so there’s no point in taking pains over a careful arrangement, is there? My random scatter must have bothered Lee Miner. I’d noticed that he’d been toying with the ornaments, but I hadn’t expected this meticulous rearrangement. On the exact tips of the branches, I found a “Puppy’s First Christmas,” then a dove or some other ordinary ornament, then a sled dog, then an ordinary ornament, then a puppy again, and so forth in tedious, equidistant repetition. The slight natural asymmetry of the fir, cut from my father’s lot in Owls Head, had probably offended Lee. I was willing to bet that if
Lee Miner had happened to be toting a pair of secateurs, he’d have pruned the tree, too.

In need of some healthy chaos, I let Rowdy and Kimi out of the bedroom. While they were snuffling and nosing around after crumbs, I carried two bags of trash outside to the barrels so the dogs wouldn’t rip through the plastic and make themselves sick on chicken bones and grease-smeared aluminum foil. Malamutes will eat
anything
. Kimi, for example, had once knocked a jar of blueberry jam off a counter and lapped up the mess, glass and all. The true basis of the Alaskan malamute’s low opinion of human judgment is our wasteful habit of always discarding good bread, meat, and milk just when they’ve ripened to a yummy slimy green and begun to stink like rancid Roquefort.

The only creature I’ve ever encountered that’s as truly omnivorous as the Alaskan malamute is that other agile, persistent, highly intelligent champion trash-raider, the Cambridge raccoon. Raccoons are here by the hundred, maybe by the thousand, and that’s why every sensible Cambridge resident has trash barrels with lock-on lids. Nothing really defeats raccoons; the point is simply to discourage them. Raccoons hibernate in winter, but the weird December warmth must have fooled them, because I’d glimpsed one scuttling out of my driveway and down Appleton Street only a few nights earlier.

Anyway, I was standing on the edge of my blacktop driveway, underneath the flight of wood steps that leads up to my back door, when I thought I heard one. I’d dumped the trash bags into a barrel and locked the lid, and I was thinking about the raccoon I’d seen the other night and wondering whether I should try one of my dozens of useless raccoon-proofing
devices. As I was eyeing a pile of concrete blocks and not enjoying the prospect of hoisting them on top of the barrels, I heard something.

The neighborhood was unusually quiet that night. Rita was away, of course, as were my third-floor tenants. On the far side of my driveway, the Dennehys’ house was dark; Kevin and his mother were still out, or else they’d gone to bed. The undergraduates who normally wander all around Cambridge had gone home for vacation, and even the traffic around the corner on Concord Avenue was light. Then something rustled. Something stirred. The sound seemed to come from the vicinity of the overgrown lilac bushes at the end of my drive or maybe from beneath my Bronco. In the hope of seeing a raccoon, I moved slowly toward the bottom of the stairs, where I stopped and waited. Yeah, raccoons make a mess of the trash, and I know better than to feed them or try to pat them. And, yes, they can carry rabies, and even though Rowdy and Kimi are always up on their shots, I don’t want raccoons around, partly because the dogs would happily kill them. But God damn. Have you ever had two or three raccoons peer down at you from the notch of a tree? They have got to be the cutest animals in the world.

I heard another rustle, then a pleading groan. Raccoons rustle, and when they mate, they shriek like human beings in pain, but they never groan. I ran up the back stairs and into my kitchen, where I grabbed a flashlight, snatched a leash from the collection that hangs on the kitchen door, and snapped it onto Rowdy’s collar. Then I smacked my lips to him, tried to explain to Kimi that we were not going for a walk, eased Rowdy out the door, and left Kimi shut inside.
I stopped on the landing just outside the door, but Rowdy, apparently unconvinced by my apology to Kimi, headed eagerly down the stairs, his eyes shining in the light of the flood over the door, his beautiful white tail waving back and forth.

“Is anyone there?” I called as I followed Rowdy. It was a stupid question. I knew that someone was there. “Are you hurt?”

At the bottom of the stairs, where I expected Rowdy to head toward the street, he turned and made his way past the Bronco, toward the opposite end of the drive. I hauled him in close to me and called again, more softly this time, “Is anyone there?”

One of the bare lilac branches moved, and I tried to see over the Bronco to the base of the shrubs, but my big car and its shadow blocked my view. Who did I think was there? A victim, I suppose, someone who’d been mugged or a homeless person seeking shelter. Although I’d taken the precaution of getting my powerful, fearless dog, I wasn’t afraid. On the contrary, that heartfelt groan had left me with an urgent sense that someone needed help.

A tall figure suddenly rose from the lilacs on the far side of the Bronco, sprang over the ugly barberry hedge that divides the Dennehys’ yard from mine, and tore off around the back of their house.

A lot of men in Cambridge have beards, of course. There are plenty of tall men here, too, and I’m sure that lots of them wear light-colored jackets. But if I hadn’t recognized the man, I’d have let Rowdy take off after him, and I’d have pursued him myself. I’d have done my best to catch him and demand what the hell he’d been doing hanging around my house. As it was, I patted Rowdy and told him
that everything was okay. I never lie to dogs. It was true in the sense that I didn’t want Rowdy to do anything. Then I ran the beam of my flashlight over the damp ground under the shrubs and discovered one thing John Buckley had been doing there: When I picked up the empty whiskey bottle, its glass neck was still warm from his hands.

During my Monday morning postparty cleanup, I destroyed Lee Miner’s joyless redecoration of my tree. To rehang everything in happy Winter-family jumble, I had to keep stepping over Rowdy and Kimi, who’d prostrated themselves before the Christmas tree. They rolled onto their backs, tucked in their heavy-boned legs, and opened their great jaws to display twin grinning mouthfuls of lupine dentition. Let me tell you, if you’ve never seen a malamute holding that pose before a Christmas tree, you don’t begin to know what silly means.

I got out the camera, snapped a lot of pictures, promised to mail them to
The Malamute Quarterly
, and thus dislodged Rowdy and Kimi so I could vacuum. Then I called Charity Wilson to check on Groucho. Rita had driven him to Haverhill on Sunday morning. I’d half expected her to return with him that evening and announce that she was canceling her trip, but, to my surprise, Charity had passed Rita’s inspection. As Hope had suggested, Charity was going to keep Groucho in the house with her, and, according to Rita, the place was more or less a doggy bed-and-breakfast, a country inn. Groucho would sleep in his own cushioned wicker basket from home
and eat the prescription food that Steve had ordered for him. Rita’s main worry had been that he’d be left alone, but she was relieved to discover that Charity spent most of her time in the house. Rita had found Charity and her business somewhat eccentric, but, as I’ve mentioned, Rita is not a true dog person. Charity designed and made hand-knit sweaters and hand-sewn, custom-tailored raincoats and parkas for dogs. Eccentric? According to one estimate, Americans spend more than ten million dollars a year on dog clothes.

I’d reassured Rita. “As a matter of fact,” I told her, “it so happens that Roald Amundsen’s sailmaker made dog clothes. His name was Martin Ronne. He made the tent that Amundsen left at the South Pole, which must’ve been what let Scott know he’d lost the race. First to the Pole? Anyway, on Byrd’s first expedition, Martin Ronne made jackets and booties for Igloo. Byrd’s pet terrier? He was very famous. You know he had an incredible funeral? He was buried in a white casket. It was a whole big deal. It must’ve cost a fortune.”

“That’s disgusting,” she said. “It’s decadent.”

“Yes, but the point is that if Amundsen’s sailmaker could make dog clothes, so can Charity, and there’s nothing weird about it.”

After allaying Rita’s doubts about Charity, I’d also reassured myself by calling Janet Switzer, Rowdy’s breeder, whose kennels were in Bradford, part of Haverhill. “The place is no Club Med, if that’s what you want to know,” Janet said, “and she hasn’t got a license, but it’s clean enough, and she spends a lot of time with the dogs. She’s all right.”

Anyway, Rita had left Groucho there, and on Monday morning, I kept my promise to call and ask
how he was. I also wanted to make sure that if anything went wrong, Charity would have the sense to yell for help.

“Well, he is one old, old dog, you know.” Charity’s voice gently warned me to face the inevitable.

“He sure is,” I agreed. “How is he doing?”

“How he’s doing is kind of hard to say. But if you want to know
what
he’s doing, the answer is not much.”

“That’s pretty normal for him. Is he eating anything?”

“Picks at his food a little. He’s not real interested in his dinner. Mostly, he just doesn’t want to move from his little beddy unless I’m going to keep him right in my lap, so that’s what I’ve been doing, keeping him warm.”

“He does wake up, doesn’t he?”

“Well, he opens his eyes. I wouldn’t take any bets that he sees much, but, yeah, he opens his eyes, and he knows I’m here. He’s a nice little fellow. He’s just too old to want to get up and do much, but he knows I’m here, all right.”

“Good,” I said. “And, look, if you notice any change, call me. You have my number?”

She read it to me and promised to call if she needed help.

Then I did something that may strike you as odd and pointless: I went outside and stared at the ground under the lilacs almost as if I expected to find John Buckley crouched there on the ground. I didn’t, of course. I found nothing but a few dead, packed-down weeds. After a few minutes I went back inside to start the research for my story about private dog trainers, the story that was going to focus on Dickie Brenner, maybe by name, maybe not, but at least on
the Brenners of the dog world. My first step was to hear what Jackie Miner had to say about him. I wanted her account, but my plan was to present myself to Brenner as a prospective client. Jackie’s description was supposed to help me decide whether to present him with one of my dogs as well. I wanted to watch Brenner with a dog, but not badly enough to inflict real abuse on one of mine, or any other, of course. Either Rowdy or Kimi would be easy to pass off as a troublemaker—people are always ready to believe the worst of a malamute—and I never intended to turn either one over to Brenner or any other trainer, but I needed to know whether to scrap that part of the plan altogether. Also, if I decided to take one of my dogs to Brenner, I wanted to know what to expect.