Black Ribbon

magazine rack. “This thing’s full of them.”
    Now that he’d made the conversation general, I joined in. “Are they all, uh...” I fumbled for the right phrase. “Are *hey all the same? All copies of the same brochure?”
    “Naw. They’re all different,” he replied. “Tombstones. Pet cemeteries. Coffins. Urns. All kinds of stuff. You want to see?”
    “Not particularly,” I answered. “But—”
    Before I could finish, the lodge door swung open so forcedly that I had to squish myself against the couch to get out of ^e way. Brandishing a large greeting card in her hand, Phyllis Abbott strode in and immediately silenced the crowd, less by speaking than by radiating judicial authority. “May I have your attention!” Mrs. Abbott began. Having already obtained it, she lowered the greeting card and, before I could get a look at the picture on the front, gave the card the kind of merciless shakedown that Rowdy administers to play-prey dog toys when he’s pretending to break their necks. When she’d finished rendering the card lifeless, she held it in front of her and intoned, “With deepest sympathy on the loss of your pet.” Opening the card, she read the following verse:
     
“ ‘Your precious pet has gone away.
I know just how you feel today.
Dear friend, recall that with the years
Sweet memories will dry your tears.
But that is then, and this now,
When you just heard that last bow-wow,
When empty dishes on the floor,
Say your best pal lives here no more.
You have my thoughts while yours are dour;
I think of you from hour to hour.’ ”
     
    Mrs. Abbott whipped the card through the air and deposited it in the hand of her blank-faced husband, who stood i few feet away, as if to disassociate himself from her or perhaps from her performance.
    “I have not lost a pet,” Airs. Abbott proclaimed, “and furthermore, let me announce to whatever vile excuse for a human being has perpetrated this prank that I have no intention whatsoever of losing a pet for a great many years to come! Nigel and Edwina are both young and in perfect health, and » this filthy, vicious act is someone’s misguided idea of a joke, I want to make it clear that, far from being funny, it is of the utmost seriousness. The person responsible evidently fails to understand that a judge is a judge is a judge, every minute of every day, no matter where she goes or what she does, and no insult directed toward a judge is ever a strictly personal matter, but constitutes a direct affront to the dignity and authority of the AKC. This, ” she added, “will be so treated.”
    She swung dramatically toward her husband, meaning, I think, to aim a finger only at the offending card. As it was, however, she appeared to be directing the avenging wrath of the American Kennel Club straight toward Don Abbott.
     

 
    TWENTY MINUTES after Judge Phyllis Abbott pointed an AKC-authorized finger at her husband, I was seated in the dining room at a round table for eight. Somewhat to my surprise, dinner really was quite formal: white linen, wine, a buffet offering roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, stuffed scrod, scalloped potatoes, broccoli, salad, and, as the brochure had promised, wine, red and white, and not in jugs, either. After the cheapskate packet, I’d half expected to find a genuinely traditional New England Sunday-night supper: hot dogs and beans with ketchup, and brown bread straight out of the can, the ridges still visible, followed by mealy Indian pudding, also canned, but mushed up, heated, and topped with vanilla ice cream, accompanied by the traditional Yankee choice between milk and nothing. Real WASP food is nowhere near as bad as people say; it’s much, much worse.
    I was sitting with Cam and Ginny, and also with Sara Altman, the head agility instructor, a dark young woman with long brown hair bound back in a ponytail. As I’ve said, Rowdy and I had once done a miniclinic with Sara, and I’d liked her a lot. Instead of admonishing me to praise my dog while telling me everything I was doing wrong, she’d used positive methods on both of us. Also, when Rowdy had pried the lid off a big metal canister of dog treats and scattered them all over the mats, she’d simply commented how helpful it was in agility to have a dog who was motivated by food. As I’ve mentioned, that’s how agility people are: obsessed. If a falling tree had crushed in the roof of Sara’s house, she’d probably have viewed the trunk and branches as an