by Susan Conant
The obsessive streak evident in Cam’s dog writing harmonized with her almost compulsive neatness. Her clothes retained visible creases—deliberate ones, that is—and her short, dark hair waved in evenly spaced rows of controlled curls. Her lipstick never smudged. Her mascara never ran. She arrived at shows with her gear meticulously packed in clever canvas cases she’d designed and sewn herself. Nicky was always under perfect control. Although the Shetland sheepdog is to the rough-coated collie what the Shetland pony is to the full-size horse, sheltie people resent having their dogs demeaned as miniature collies. Thus I hesitate to report that the sable-and-white Nicky really looked a lot like a rerun of Lassie on a very small screen.
Cam was in her early or midthirties, about my age. Ginny Garabedian, her companion and cabinmate at Waggin’ Tail, looked about sixty, as she’d done for the ten years I’d known her and would probably continue to do for another two or three decades. An AKC tracking judge and breeder of Labrador retrievers, Ginny was a compact, sturdy person who braided her gray hair into an extremely long plait that she wrapped around and around her head and fastened tightly in place. Bareheaded, she looked as if she wore an elaborately woven basket upturned on her head. Like a lot of tracking people, however, she frequently wore a real hat, and when I first met her, the double chapeau effect always made me wonder whether Ginny had some haberdashery-specific neurological disorder that caused her to perceive two hats as one.
After a while, though, I learned to ignore the oddity of Ginny’s head. For one thing, I ran into her a lot and got used to it. She showed in breed, casually and routinely put Novice obedience titles on her dogs, taught tracking clinics, attended seminars on canine nutrition and diseases, wrote a few articles for the dog magazines, belonged to D.W.A.A.—the Dog Writers’ Association of America—and otherwise gaited my own rings of the haut monde du chien. For another thing, I learned something about Ginny that diverted me from her trivial quirk of appearance, namely, that she had outlived five husbands. I was astounded. Topped by the plait alone, Ginny had a vigorous, outdoorsy, and distinctly unisex attractiveness. If she’d been a bird, I thought, she’d have belonged to some appealing species shown in the field guides with a single illustration and the notation “sexes alike.” After I heard about the five dead husbands, I wondered about them whenever I saw Ginny. So complete was her dedication to dogs that I found it difficult to imagine her being interested in one man, never mind five, unless they’d all looked like Labrador retrievers. Or maybe, with canine opportunism, she’d married the men to support her dogs. If the full truth be known, I also wondered what had killed the five husbands and how much life insurance each had carried. As it turned out, everyone else in dogs harbored the same suspicions about Ginny that I did. Never having been married, however, I kept mine to myself until the day a dog acquaintance of Ginny’s and mine confronted me on the subject. “Look,” she said, “here are the rest of us, fighting and scheming and begging whenever it’s time to get a new show puppy, and then there’s Ginny, and, I mean, you have to ask yourself: What did she do to deserve that kind of luck?”
“Prize b-i-t-c-h,” Cam repeated. “And in my area, everywhere you go, there’s Eva.” Cam’s area, if I remembered correctly, was New York or New Jersey. By everywhere, she did not mean supermarkets, movie theaters, and dinner parties; she meant only the places that counted. “You can’t go to a show without seeing her! And she is so obnoxious. She’ll stand outside the breed rings and say awful things about everyone’s dogs—”
“At the top of her lungs, too,” added Ginny, who was not, by the way, wearing a hat. We were standing in the shade of a big old white birch midway between my cabin and the main lodge.
“Yes,” Cam agreed, “and she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, either, and Ginny, I am really sorry to say this, but that dog does not belong on the grounds of an AKC show.” Cam and her husband, I remembered, had connections at AKC. Among other things, he was a delegate. For AKC types like Cam—and like me, as well—the fancy spins on the axis of the American Kennel Club. A dog with Bingo’s temperament, I should point out, didn’t belong on the grounds of any show, AKC, UKC, or any other KC, either.
“I don’t mind,” Ginny said. “I know when I’ve made a mistake. I should never, ever have sold to Eva. She ruined that lovely puppy. I have never had temperament problems in my lines. My dogs live right in the house with me, and they all get along, and I can take them anywhere, and they never so much as look cross-eyed at another dog.” As if to verify Ginny’s claim, the chocolate Lab bitch she had with her strolled over to Rowdy, lowered her head, tilted it, stuck out a long pink tongue, and licked Rowdy’s muzzle. He regarded her with the air of an emperor accepting obeisance from a serf. “This one’s the worst of all,” Ginny commented. “Her name’s Wiz, but everyone always ends up calling her Kissy Face.”
“I knew that dog of Eva’s looked familiar,” I said happily, “but I couldn’t place him. Bingo. Bingo looks like that big male of yours. I knew he reminded me …”
Ginny’s face contorted in pain. Her body seemed to shrink.
Cam caught my eye, frowned, and briefly raised a finger to her lips. “Merlin died,” she informed me quietly.
“I am so sorry,” I said. “I had no idea. He was a wonderful dog. So beautiful.”
And he was, too. Without spilling the sordid contents of “the Labrador mess”—a prolonged controversy about revising the AKC standard of the Labrador retriever—let me explain that the breed has become separated into two distinct lines, bench and field, show dogs and hunting dogs, and that Ginny’s were show dogs. So dirty and slippery are the grounds around the Labrador mess that I’m afraid to say what Ginny’s dogs looked like lest I skid on some politically charged word and tumble in. Let’s say that Merlin had been a big-boned, flashy-looking yellow dog with many titles and tons of charisma. Or let’s just say that Ginny loved him a lot.
“I’m so sorry,” I repeated. Ginny’s pain was contagious. I patted my thigh to summon Rowdy and dug my fingers into the depths of his coat. Then I ran my fingertips over his wet nose. The gesture was completely irrational. Rowdy had been bouncing around sniffing tree trunks, lifting his leg, making friends with Wiz, and accepting her drooly kisses. I didn’t need to touch him to make sure that he was alive. I felt a renewed urgency about calling Leah. A mistake, I thought again, remembering the sympathy card. A simple error. Not Kimi.
“Thank you,” Ginny said. “People have been …”
“It helps,” I said. “It helps a little.”
“Not really.” Cam shook her head. “Nothing does, really.”
“It would be worse if no one gave a damn,” I said.
“That’s how it is for most people,” Ginny said. “They can’t even talk about it. They’re afraid that someone’s going to say, you know, ‘only a dog.’ ”
“One thing about this place,” said Cam, “is that no one’s going to say that. Everyone here understands.”
I nodded.
“I was going to bring Merlin,” Ginny told me, “and I had to call Maxine and tell her, and then when I got here, she’d left a card.”
“In our room,” Cam said. “We’re sharing.” Cam’s face and tone lightened. Her smile was wry. “But Max did forget to sign it.”
Ginny shrugged. “Maxine’s been running her tail off. It’s a wonder she remembered at all.”
In the couple of seconds since I’d last had my eye on Rowdy, he’d wandered to one of the many covered trash barrels stationed here and there on the grounds. Fastened to the side of each was a big plastic bag that held a large supply of small plastic bags to be used in cleaning up after dogs and then deposited in the big barrels. The barrels were admittedly a sort of tree-trunk brown, and this one must already have acquired the interesting scent of other dogs. Even so. “Rowdy, not there!” I ordered him. His glance called me a fool, but he dutifully lowered his leg. “Good boy.” I switched my attention back to Cam and Ginny. “Which cabin are you i
n?”
Cam pointed. “The first one.”
“Oh, I’m next door,” I said.
Cam and Ginny exchanged a look I couldn’t read. As if first having obtained Ginny’s consent, Cam said, “Lucky you.”
“To be right on the lake?”
Their expressions changed.
“Am I missing something?” I asked. “That’s one of the things Eva was complaining about, that her cabin’s in the second row. I mean, it’s practically on the lake, but …”
Cam shook her head without disarranging a single dark hair. “Met your neighbors yet?” she asked pertly.
“Not really. There’s a guy sitting out on the deck, but I didn’t meet him. He was talking on the phone. He had a cellular phone. Am I supposed to know him?”
Ginny finally gave me a straight answer. “Don Abbott. You know Phyllis. Phyllis Abbott.”
It took me a moment to place the name. “Oh, Mrs. Abbott. The judge. That’s right. Maxine mentioned they were next to me. Sure. I’ve shown under Mrs. Abbott. I stewarded for her a couple of years ago. In Utility.” Utility. What is Utility? If you happen to be a Mason, I can explain it easily. It’s Third Degree. Really. Three Craft Degrees, First, Second, and Third, leading respectively to the titles Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason. Three obedience trial classes: Novice, Open, and Utility; CD, CDX, and UD. UDX? Knights Templar, I suppose. OTCH? Royal Arch. Eerie, isn’t it? The Scottish Rite. The York Rite. The Rite of Canine Obedience. “I liked her,” I continued. “She was very fair. I’d show under her again. What’s wrong with her?”
If a heretofore pleasant and fair obedience judge had turned mean, I wanted to know. I don’t believe in paying entry fees to show under judges who make snide remarks or invent their own rules. Neither does anyone else. That’s why most obedience judges are terrific. People don’t enter under the bad ones, and clubs don’t rehire judges who draw small entries. It’s a form of natural selection: survival of the fairest.
“Nothing,” Ginny said firmly. “It’s just that Cam—”
Cam cut in: “It’s nothing. Forget I said it. It’s not Phyllis, anyway. It’s just that Max didn’t have to take everyone who applied.”
“I, uh, have the impression that she more or less did,” I said. “It’s her first year. I don’t think she could afford to turn people down. And what excuse could she give people? ‘Sorry, but no one likes you’?”
“There could’ve been a rule about aggressive dogs,” Ginny said.
“Are the Abbotts’ dogs …?” I asked.
“No,” Cam said. “And anyway, they’re Poms.” The ideal weight for the Pomeranian is four or five pounds. Toy breeds can be aggressive, but there’s a limit to the harm they can do, and, in any case, Pomeranians are sweethearts. “Actually, Phyllis has very nice dogs. And Phyllis Abbott is a good handler. You have to give her that. Ginny means Eva Spitteler. Ginny, just ignore her. Everyone knows what Eva’s like. No one pays any attention to her.”
“Eva goes around telling everyone awful things about me,” Ginny informed me.
Cam sounded impatient. “But, Ginny, no one listens to Eva Spitteler.”
“Hah! She lures all those pet people in, and she charges them a fortune. They listen to her.”
“No one who counts,” Cam said. Then she filled me in. “Eva runs a so-called training center. She does a lot of puppy kindergarten, pet obedience, that kind of thing, and she has no credentials—no one really knows who she is—but she gets all these pet people, and they don’t know any better.”
“She’s never so much as put one CD on one dog,” Ginny said indignantly.
“The pet people don’t care,” Cam said. “They just don’t know. Eva tells them that obedience is some big deal, and they believe every word she says, and then when they hear that she’s entered Bingo, they think, ‘Oh, wow, an obedience trial. She must be really something.’ And she sells dog food and all kinds of dog supplies, and she charges like five percent less than the pet shops, and she tells people she’s getting them a special deal on everything. And supposedly she’s starting some kind of mail-order business. That’s her latest.”
“Eva makes a lot of money,” Ginny commented.
“But she doesn’t sell puppies,” I said. “She doesn’t run a real pet shop.”
Cam and Ginny looked suitably shocked. “No,” Cam said, “Eva wouldn’t do that. As a matter of fact, she keeps people out of the pet shops. That’s one good thing she does.”
Ginny held firm. “The only one.”
“Eva does try,” Cam said. “Mainly, she’s obnoxious. She just isn’t cut out to be an instructor. She doesn’t have any credentials, but she does try. She goes to workshops and things. It doesn’t do any good, but she does go. She just doesn’t learn anything. If you ask me, the real problem is her personality. And, Ginny, that’s the thing about Bingo. Everyone knows that. Considering what Eva’s like, Bingo could be a lot worse.”
“There ought to be a rule about flex leads,” I said. “I don’t mind so much if Bingo is dog-aggressive, but, if he is, he ought to be under control. He should be on a short lead. What happened was that Bingo went flying at Rowdy, and Eva couldn’t stop him. If he’d attacked Rowdy, well, Bingo is a big dog, but there wouldn’t be anything left of him.”
At the sound of his name, Rowdy quit fooling around with Wiz, Ginny’s kissy-face Lab, and emitted an elaborate series of northern-breed vocalizations that culminated in a strong suggestion politely intoned as a question: Ah-roo, woo-woo-woo, woo-woo-woo, roo-roo? Translation: Can we get the hell out of here?
Even without the translation, Cam and Ginny looked startled.
“He needs to finish his walk,” I said, “and I have to call home before this meeting. I need to check on my bitch.” Real dog people like Ginny and Cam required no explanation, but I couldn’t think of a good reason to withhold the real one. “Ginny, the card you got? About Merlin. There was a sympathy card in my cabin, too.”
Their faces fell. “Holly, you should’ve—” Ginny started to say.
“Nothing’s happened. That’s what’s so weird. The last dog I lost was Vinnie, and that was a month before I got Rowdy. Ginny, could I ask you, the card you got, did it have a sort of watercolor scene? With a couple of trees? And something like, ‘With Sympathy on the Loss of Your Pet.’ In a kind of pale tan envelope.”
Ginny nodded.
I said, “I got the same card. I assumed it was some kind of mistake. It probably is. It has to be. Mine wasn’t signed, either.”
Cam and Ginny both understood: I still had to call home.
THE WOMAN in front of me in line for the pay phone wore a blue T-shirt with a picture of a beret-wearing poodle and the proclamation: J’embrasse mon chien sur la bouche. But the dog at her feet was a feisty-looking basenji, and she wasn’t kissing him on the mouth, either. She was complaining. “One phone for the whole place isn’t my idea of luxury. Wouldn’t you think they’d have them in the rooms? All these dog people? Everyone’s going to need to call home all the time.”
The big lobby of the lodge had had its log walls scrubbed and its floor refinished. The furniture had been arranged with such professional skill that the red-upholstered couches and chairs appeared engaged in happy conversation with the consciously rustic end tables, coffee tables, and magazine racks. The sepia-tinted, blown-up photographs on the walls showed grubby, grinning fishermen holding impressive strings of trout. It seemed just as well that the anglers and their catch were now confined behind glass. Sweat, bug dope, and dead fish would have fought the saccharine reek of floral incense, scented candles, and gift-shop potpourri. A mammoth brown trout mounted on a wooden plaque above the stone fireplace paid odorless tribute to varnish and taxidermy. There wasn’t a fly rod in sight.
But the renovators had left the original phone booth, a wooden cabinet tucked under the staircase to the second floor. Superman lives. At the moment, though, the hinged door was folded open.
“Just sho
ve it down his throat and clamp his jaws shut,” a woman was saying, “and then blow on his nose until he sticks his tongue out, and give him a cookie and tell him what a good boy he is.” After she finished, a man in a Big Dog T-shirt interrogated some unfortunate veterinarian about a puddle of perfectly ordinary-sounding vomitus. “Bright yellow and slimy,” the man insisted. “You practically wanted to scramble it.” Then the mouth-kissing basenji woman reminded someone that under no circumstances was Arax ever to be allowed off leash. My turn finally arrived. Rowdy, of course, did not fit in the phone booth. He had to sit just outside. It didn’t matter. I’m not the kind of person who makes the dog say hello.
In the half day since I’d left Cambridge, my cousin Leah had replaced the message on my answering machine with the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth followed by a cacophony in which Kimi’s woo-wooing vied with the loud barks of her friend Jeff’s Border collie. The noise abruptly quit, and Leah’s recorded voice informed me that I had three minutes in which to record my innermost thoughts. As I was about to do so in rather violent language, Leah came on live.
“Leah, is Kimi all right?” I demanded.
“You don’t trust me!”
“I leave you with my bitch in season, and—? Leah, let me tell you, greater trust hath no woman. She is all right?”
Although I’m the one who initiated Leah into dogs, she is nonetheless the kind of person who …
Although growling and roaring carry poorly over telephone lines, I hung up reassured about Kimi’s vigor, yet in some peculiar way, newly angry about the unsigned sympathy card.