by Susan Conant
"Maybe Millie would like him," Barbara said.
Frank Stanton kept a library of dog books that he shared with our club and several others, so everyone knew his housekeeper, Millie Ferguson, who was even tinier than Barbara Doyle and at least five years older than Dr. Stanton.
"I don't think she has the strength to handle him," I said. "She can't manage the heavy work anymore. Has Roger lost interest?"
I would never, of course, have turned Rowdy over to that big dope, but the club was still reacting against Margaret Robichaud's negativism, and I didn't want to sound like her. I needn't have worried. Dr. Stanton had observed Roger training Lion, although training is hardly the right word.
"Frank and I had a talk about it last spring," Ron said. In addition to being a plumber and the owner of Vixen, Ron is our treasurer. He has a round, ruddy face, and the hair he has left is blondish. "We arranged a sort of deal. I told him that if anything happened, we'd find a home for Rowdy. In return, we get his books."
"Where are we supposed to put them?" Arlene asked.
"Won't Roger let us leave them where they are?" Barbara asked. "It isn't as though people go there all that often."
"Something tells me we aren't going to be seeing too much of Roger from now on," Arlene said. She seldom worries about the impression she's making. "Hasn't the possibility crossed your mind that his interest in obedience might have some remote connection with his interest in a certain inheritance?"
"But he really loves Lion," I objected. How could he not? Newfoundlands are sweet dogs, and Lion was outstandingly sweet even for a Newfie.
"Of course he loves Lion," Arlene said. "But if you ask me, that was an accident. If you want my opinion, the reason he got a dog in the first place was to ingratiate himself with Frank. Just watch. He'll take the money and run."
"And we'll have a roomful of books and no place to put them," said Roz.
"I'm not even a hundred percent sure we're getting them," Ron said. He's usually an up-front guy, but his face had an odd, shifty expression. "Mostly, he wanted to make some plans for Rowdy, and after all he's done, what could I say?"
In addition to working for the club and letting us use the library, Dr. Stanton always donated the trophies for our big annual obedience trial as well as the trophies for the highest-scoring dog in each class at our little fun matches. The primary purpose of a fun match like the one we'd scheduled for the following Thursday is exactly what the name suggests: fun. It also gives the dogs and handlers a chance to practice in the ring. Any dog, including a mixed breed, is welcome. The only thing the winners expect is a ribbon or, if the dogs are lucky, a ribbon plus a few dog biscuits. Trophies aren't necessary, but they add a special touch to our fun matches.
"You could have consulted with us," Roz said to Ron. "A full-grown malamute isn't all that easy to give away if you're fussy about a good home."
"You know how much Frank donated last year?" said Ron. "Was I supposed to tell him thanks, we really appreciate everything, and as soon as you're buried, we'll drive Rowdy to Angell?"
Angell Memorial is a big veterinary hospital with what's optimistically called an adoption ward.
"Of course not," Roz said. "But you might have let us know."
"Okay, I probably should've let you know," Ron conceded, "but I didn't expect him to die. Did you?"
"Look," said Vince, who's used to stepping calmly into the midst of snarling, "could I remind everyone that we've got business to take care of? Let's worry about the books if and when we get them. For now, they can stay where they are. Roger isn't going to burn them. The dog is our real responsibility. Obviously, Frank realized that Roger couldn't provide an appropriate home for him."
"All right! I get the message," I said. "I now own a future Utility malamute."
Everyone laughed. Utility Dog is the third obedience title, and it's easier to shove a camel through the eye of a needle than it is to put U.D. on a dog. If you intend to try, you start with a golden retriever, a German shepherd, a Rottweiler, a poodle, a corgi, just about anything but a malamute. Getting a malamute for obedience purposes is not very rational. In fact, as I demonstrated that night, the main reason you get a malamute is that you're not rational on the subject of dogs.
"Congratulations," Lynne said. "We knew it wouldn't be too difficult to pull this off."
If I'd been with a group of malamute breeders and had just decided to take some abandoned runt, all of them, somewhere in their hearts, would have felt a secret glee that my dog would never defeat theirs in breed, what Kevin had called the beauty contest. Obedience isn't like that, especially at my club. Obedience competition is God's way of making a point about humility. Anytime you start to feel too superior to another handler, God (Remember? "Dog" spelled backward) intervenes by inspiring your dog to wander around the ring or to lift his leg on one of the hurdles.
"Look," Vince said, "we've got a match scheduled for Thursday night. I would like to know what your feelings are about it. Do we cancel?"
"Dr. Stanton would have hated that," I said.
"We don't have any choice," Arlene said. "Nobody wants to think about it, but the fact is, the same thing could happen again. Are we going to have people show up when there's some lunatic loose?"
"In the first place, the police arrested someone," Roz said. "And in the second place, no one's going to stand outside alone."
"They don't know the guy did it," I said. "One of my neighbors is a cop. They're just holding him. They don't have any proof."
"So it's not safe," Arlene said. "I mean, the shelter's still open. Anybody could come along. One of those people may have something against dogs."
I did not point out that someone with something against dogs would have strangled a borzoi or a dachshund, not an ophthalmologist.
"We don't know that someone from the shelter did it," Lynne said. "It could have been anyone."
"Not really," Ray said.
"So do we cancel?" Vince is what some Cambridge types call task-oriented.
"There must be something we can do," Lynne said. "If we cancel, you know, we really cancel. We can't postpone it a week or two. The judges have been lined up for months. I don't think everyone realizes how much work goes into this."
"The real point is," Ron said, "that Holly's right. Canceling the match is the last thing Frank would have wanted."
"He was looking forward to it," Arlene admitted.
"More than that, he was going to enter," Roz said. "You know, one of the reasons he quit going to shows was his eyesight. He was afraid he'd bump into things and stuff. And besides, Rowdy wasn't ready. But he thought that since all of us knew about his sight, and since we'd all seen what Rowdy was like when Frank first started with him, it would be nice to give it a try, Novice or maybe Pre-Novice."
When Dr. Stanton had first started with Rowdy, the big mal had dragged him through every training session, challenged all the other dogs, and convinced every member of the bridge Dog Training Club that malamute vocalizations are designed to carry leagues across the tundra. Any trainer except Vince would have kicked Rowdy out of the class.
"Novice," Arlene said. "Some of those people in Pre-Novice won't have had more than four or five lessons. He thought it'd be unfair to them."
"I have a thought about security," Barbara said quietly. "I think it would be possible to organize a patrol. That way, if safety is the real issue, we wouldn't have to cancel."
She volunteered her three German shepherds, with herself and her husband to handle two of them. Ron agreed to handle the third. Vince offered his cousins, Tony and Alice, with their two Rottweilers, and the Metcalfs promised to line up a few more people and dogs. Pending Steve's approval, I donated him and India, and I said I'd talk to Kevin.
"Hey, I've got a great idea," Barbara said to me as everyone was leaving. "You can enter Rowdy! Really, what we can do is have the whole thing be a sort of tribute to Frank, and there's nothing he would have loved better than having Rowdy there."
Forging ahead and nipping at my hands.
"Barbara," I said, "that's a lovely idea, but he's not ready."
"So enter him in Pre-Novice," Lynne said.
Official trials don't even have a Pre-Novice or Sub-Novice class, which means just what it sounds like: rank beginner. Buck and Marissa raised me to be a good sport. “He's too advanced," I said. "It wouldn't be fair."
"So put him in Novice, like Frank would have wanted. It's just a fun match," Arlene said. "We know what he's like."
She was right. I was suffering from pride. There is nothing that makes the human face burn like having a dog embarrass you in the ring. The ring is the only place I ever blush. Lots of people have dreams about walking down the street and suddenly realizing that they don't have any clothes on. I have nightmares about walking around the ring and suddenly finding that I don't have any dog at heel.
"I'll think about it," I said.
"I'm entering you in Novice," said Vince. Vince, I thought, must be one of those rare people born with an immunity to ring blush. "See you at the funeral, I guess."
When they were gone and I was tidying up, I found a navy-blue jacket that someone had left on one of the kitchen chairs. It's not polite to go through people's pockets, but I didn't know whose jacket it was, and there might be ID in it. In the left pocket of the jacket was a plastic bottle from Huron Drug. According to the label, the pills in the bottle were Valium prescribed for Vincent Dragone. The secret of his imperturbability? Twenty minutes later, he called to ask whether he'd left his jacket.
"Oh, it's yours," I said with what I hoped was a tone of surprise. "I wondered whose it was."
He stopped by to pick it up, then I went to bed. I had bad dreams. "See you at the funeral," Vince kept telling me. Books sometimes tell you that it's good for children to have pets because the inevitability of losing a pet helps teach children to come to terms with death. Compared to human beings, dogs have a short life span, so with all of the dogs in my family, the real inevitability was that I had too many lessons too early. I sometimes concoct private last rites of my own, but I will do anything to avoid even the possibility that I might have to go to a real funeral.
On Saturday morning, after I called Kevin and extracted a promise of official help with security for the match, I set out for Maine. My new dog had so much scrap and hustle that with less fur and more height, he'd have been a Red Auerbach pick for the Celtics' starting five. I was taking him to training camp.
6
The drive to Owls Head takes about four hours if you don't stop, but we took a break on the Maine Turnpike at what claimed to be a restaurant. It sold what it claimed was coffee. I took the paper cup out to the Bronco. After one taste, I threw the cup into a trash barrel, got out the thermos of water, and filled its cup for me and a stainless-steel bowl for Rowdy. The thermos and bowl were the ones I always used to take to shows. Some of us are careful about the water available at shows. A change in water can upset a dog's digestion. An accident in the ring is humiliating for a dignified dog, and it means automatic disqualification.
We hit Owls Head at about two. When Marissa was alive, the house looked like an illustration for a Down East Magazine article on coastal perennial gardens. It's on a narrow, pine-lined blacktop road that tourists mistake for the real Maine. The real Maine is dirt roads that lead to tar-paper shacks. It's cellar homes with no houses on top. Buck is trying hard to restore reality to Owls Head. He has a way to go. Patches of white paint remain on the wood shingles. Marissa's peonies and day lilies still bloom in the summer, but most of the garden space now belongs to turnips for the deer, sunflower and thistle for the birds. A double row of pines now blocks the view of the house from the road. The tourists who used to slow down to admire the garden can barely see the house. If they catch a glimpse and hear the howling, they must assume that behind the trees lives one of those famous Down East backwoods characters they've read about in vanity-press publications sold at souvenir shops. Although Down East doesn't begin until Ellsworth, and little Owls Head is backwoodsy only by contrast with Old Orchard Beach, they won't entirely have missed the point. Buck knows more about dogs than any other living human being, and if that makes someone a character, a character he is.
I parked the Bronco in front of the once-red barn. The wolf dogs do not run free, but I thought Rowdy might cause chaos if he started poking his nose into their kennels, so I leashed him. Buck, who must have heard the car and the howling and barking and who has a sixth sense for the presence of a new dog on his turf anyway, emerged from the kitchen door. Fifty-five, six one, with thick Yankee features, he's a graying, blue-eyed moose dressed in wolf-shredded L.L. Bean, a looming, shabby presence.
"Well, hello, big fellow," he said. If moose could speak, they'd have Buck's deep, smooth voice. "Aren't you a beauty! What does she call you?" His eyes glitter when he talks to dogs. In his half-wild way, he's a handsome man.
Rowdy, who knew even then not to jump on people, rose on his hind legs, wagged his plumy tail, rested his forepaws on Buck's chest, and tried to lick his face. Malamutes have large tongues.
"Rowdy," I said. "Hello, Dad."
"Where'd Rowdy come from?" Buck was obviously pleased. He's easy to please. All you have to do is get a dog.
"Frank Stanton via the Cambridge Dog Training Club. You heard?"
"Heard it through the grapevine. Rowdy of Nome, huh?"
"Rowdy of Cambridge," I said.
"Rowdy of Nome was one of the first malamutes in the stud book," Buck said. He loves to pontificate. "Nineteen thirty-five. The original Kotzebue line. That's what this dog is. A big Kotzebue."
I now know that a Kotzebue dog is descended from the ones bred in the thirties at the Chinook Kennels in New Hampshire, the original dogs registered when the AKC first recognized the Alaskan malamute. I know lots of other facts about the history of Alaskan malamutes, too. Buck's wolf dogs are part malamute.
We stood out in the cold while he lectured. He cannot abide ignorance about dogs, and he was dressed for coastal Maine in November. The high point of his story was the low point in malamute history. Shortly before World War II, at the end of an Antarctic expedition, the commander of a naval vessel that was supposed to transport the dogs home put all of the expedition's malamutes on a glacier, set a time bomb, and left, thus destroying a lot of the foundation stock. I didn't want to hear any more, and when Buck started on the great debate about whether there was any wolf in the original malamutes, I seized the opportunity.
"Speaking of wolves," I said, "aren't introductions overdue?"
When I say that Buck shares his house with the wolf dogs, I don't mean that all of them live in the house all the time. They follow a fixed rotation schedule. Each one gets to be a house dog about once every two weeks, except that Buck makes frequent exceptions for Clyde, who is really his pet. The others are kennel dogs. Don't feel sorry for them. The kennels are large chain-link runs with concrete floors, and each run leads to a stall in the barn. Many people, including Buck, live in houses that are less meticulously clean than those kennels and stalls.
It just happened to be Clyde's turn as house dog. Buck brought him out, but we kept both dogs on leash for the first few minutes. Rowdy bounded around, sniffed, and otherwise lived up to his name. Clyde, who looks like a lean, leggy, timid malamute, stood stiffly and did his best to ignore Rowdy. We unleashed them both and stood back. Rowdy moved in close. Clyde turned slowly so that his left side faced Rowdy. Rowdy tried to sniff his rear end. Clyde lifted one upper lip in an Elvis Presley sneer, displayed a set of teeth about twice the size of Rowdy's, and emitted a single low growl. Rowdy got the message. He assumed the universal doggy let's-play pose—rump up, forelegs bent, shoulders down—and Clyde mirrored him. I watched their rough-and-tumble for a minute, then went in out of the cold.
The inside of my parents' house still looks more or less the way it did when I was growing up except that Marissa used to hire someone to clean. Now, if you comment on the fur, Bu
ck asks with alarmed concern in his voice, "You're not allergic, are you?" His nasal passages have adapted so completely to dander that he would probably sneeze and cough if fate forced him into an enclosed space that had never known the presence of a dog. He breathes with particular ease in the kitchen.
I've always loved that kitchen. The sink is real slate, not soapstone. The stove is a Modern Glenwood Wood Parlor. There's a brick fireplace, and the floor is brick-red tile that my mother laid herself when tile was only practical, not fashionable. The curtains ought to be replaced. They're red. It took me a long time to understand that red is supposed to signal danger. For me, it always meant safety because it's what you wear in deer season if you don't want to get shot.
Buck and Rowdy came in. Clyde was in his kennel. Asking him for hospitality might have been pushing it. Buck filled a large tarnished sterling-silver engraved bowl with water and put it on the floor by the sink. Marissa, whose dog won that bowl, always polished it. She kept it, filled with fruit, on the sideboard in the dining room, surrounded by other trophies. Buck never polishes the trophies, and the ones he uses for the dogs have a few dents.
With a cup of that disgusting instant coffee he likes, Buck joined me at the table.
"So let's see his papers," he said with a smile.
"I don't have them," I said.
"I'm glad your mother isn't here," he said sternly. He wasn't joking. "She'd be very disappointed in you, Holly."
"I'm getting them. I just don't have them yet," I said.
* * *
If you ever need to get a dog in shape fast, go to Buck's. On Sunday morning, he cajoled Rowdy into hopping onto his new toy, a giant electronic scale (no lifting), and verified my impression that my new dog was not just big, but overweight. We started on a program of exercise, a five-mile walk each morning and again each afternoon, with two training sessions a day as well. In between, Rowdy played with Clyde and slept. The solution to the nipping problem was Buck's suggestion, a nylon training collar in place of the chain one. On Buck's advice, I also did something that would have shocked Marissa. I used food to reward Rowdy for the recall. It worked. By Wednesday, although he still forged ahead and still didn't look at me when he was heeling, his work wasn't too bad. The only preparation left was to bathe and groom him.