Black Ribbon

a few hundred people instead of just one, I’d have attended every all-breed show, every specialty, and every trial in the country, and I’d have had fun at every one. Have I lost you? Specialty: a single-breed dog show, limited to Siberian huskies, Pulik, German shepherd dogs, whatever. Preferably, from my point of view, Alaskan malamutes.
    “Sure,” I told Bonnie. “Anything you want except one more article on the search for a new president. That one’s been done to death.”
    “Do me a nice hands-on, how-to piece,” Bonnie said.
    “How to Amateur-Handle Your Dog to Best of Breed at Westminster.”Short article. Entire text: Don’t. Hire a professional.
    Bonnie added a thought. “Something about judges. Etiquette for exhibitors. Making the judge’s job easy. Do’s and Don’t’ s. You have the guidelines?”
    In what may at first seem like a digression, let me point out that in conventional Masonry, G stands for God and Geometry. In the fancy, it means Guidelines: “Guidelines for Dog Show Judges” and “Guidelines for Obedience Judges.” R is also sacred to us: “Rules Applying to Dog Shows,”
    “Rules Applying to Registration and Discipline,”
    “Obedience Regulations,” single copies of which used to be free, sort of like Gideon Bibles, but now cost a dollar apiece. Before long, the Gideons’ll start tacking a nominal rental fee onto motel rates. Anyway, in Masonry, G refers to God’s compass, and in our order, it refers to Guidelines, which is to say that in both orders, G, the last letter in you-know-what, defines the limits of good and evil. Have I lost you? Well, the Moose may have discarded the tab, but in the fancy, we’re as backward as ever.
    The promised preregistration packet arrived a week after Bonnie’s call, on a July day when the sun burning over Cambridge, Massachusetts, was as red as the letters that spelled out the camp name and motto on the big white envelope:
     
    WAGGIN’ TAIL
    Where All the Dogs Are Happy Campers
    And All the Owners “Ruff It In Luxury”!
     
    Torn open and upended on my kitchen table, the thick envelope yielded one color-glossy promotional brochure for Waggin’ Tail Camp and dozens of photocopied pages that I spread out and sorted through. The brochure, a slick professional product, displayed several appealing photographs: one of a sunset reflected in a sapphire blue lake; one of a gigantic log cabin with miniature clone-cabins arrayed on either side; one of a mastiff bitch, Maxine McGuire’s, no doubt, with a large litter of pups similarly clustered about her. Maxine and my editor, I might mention, belonged to the same lodge— Bonnie’s mastiffs went back to Maxine’s lines—thus Bonnie’s loyalty to Maxine and the eagerness of Dog’s Life magazine to support Maxine’s new enterprise.
    The text of the camp’s brochure contained a great many exclamation points. It was principally devoted to persuading the reader that, in contrast to competing institutions, Waggin’ Tail offered a high degree of—and here I don’t just talk the talk, but quote the quotes—“civilization.” For the last week of August, Waggin’ Tail, it proclaimed, had exclusive possession of the newly refurbished Mooselookmeguntic Four Seasons Resort Lodge and Cabins, located in Maine’s beautiful and unspoiled Rangeley Lakes region, where campers would enjoy home-cooked gourmet meals featuring sumptuous regional delicacies (“including lobster!!!”), a daily cocktail hour, wine with dinner, and various other alcoholic and nonalcoholic extravagances unavailable at competing camps!!! “Ruff It in Luxury!”
    Despite the promises of lavish accommodations, epicurean delights, and copious tippling, what obviously set Waggin’ Tail apart from numerous similar camps was that it cost a ridiculous amount of money. The fees appeared not in the brochure, but on one of the photocopied enclosures. Of necessity, the figures were in fine print; otherwise, they wouldn’t have fit on the page. I had no idea why I’d even been sent the fee schedule. In return for the laudatory piece I’d been assigned to produce, my dogs and I were on full scholarship.
    The remaining material consisted of a five-page welcome-to-camp form letter from Maxine McGuire; a tentative schedule of camp activities that included every dog sport and activity I’d ever heard of and a bewildering number of workshops, seminars, and courses on topics such as leash-braiding and canine first aid;