Black Ribbon

one’s coming back! And you can goddamn well tell Max McGuire I said so.” Heather turned geranium red. For a few seconds, she seemed to hold her breath. Then she gave in. “This time,” she said, “I’ll clean it up. And I hope you understand: Nag' ging people about this is part of my job. If we leave this place a mess, Max isn’t going to be able to use it again, and part of my job, besides agility, is making sure that camp’s welcome back next year, okay? So no hard feelings. You ever done any agility before?”
    “Not exactly,” said Eva, “but Bingo’s a natural.”
    Sara Altman tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey, nice to see Rowdy again. You got food with you?”
    Me and American Express. I fished some dog treats out of my pocket.
    “Little bits,” Sara ordered. Raising her voice, she called, “Could we get together for a minute? Then we’ll split up into groups.”
    All of us gathered at the A-frame. Agility for beginners had drawn a decent-sized group: Eva and Bingo, of course; Cam and her super-sheltie, Nicky; Ginny with kissy-face Wiz; a married-looking couple and the two basenjis I’d seen lure coursing; and dog-tattooed Michael with the real dog, Jacob, a creamy white long-haired Akita. Malamutes with coats like that are called “woollies,” and long-haired corgis are known as “fluffies,” but as far as I know, long-haired Akitas are just plain long-haired. In malamutes, the long, soft woolly coat is a simple homozygous recessive trait that breeders loathe. You can’t show woollies, but in Malamute Rescue, we sometimes have waiting lists of adopters who’ve owned woollies and won’t settle for a dog with a standard coat. (Interested? Alaskan Malamute Protection League, P.O. Box 170, Cedar Crest, NM 87008) Phyllis Abbott had brought her male Pomeranian, Nigel, a handsome fellow who, in contrast to her husband, doubtless refrained from drinking, swearing, and running up big phone bills by talking dog politics. Joy, Craig, and the more-or-less Cairn, Lucky, were there, or perhaps I should say that Joy and Lucky were there and that Craig was also present. Young, blond, and sweet-faced, Joy stood in front of the massive A-frame with the little dog nestled in her arms.
    About a yard to one side was her husband, Craig. I had a blasphemous vision of Joy and Lucky as the Madonna and Child posed before the A-frame, their manger. Craig was the awkward, extraneous Joseph, deeply puzzled by miraculous love.
     

 
    “ZONE HABITS!” Sara smacked her open palm on the lower portion of the A-frame, which, I remind you, was like two nine-foot lengths of boardwalk hinged in the middle and raised to form an inverted V. The bulk of the obstacle—and bulk is the right word—was painted bright blue, but the lower portion of each ramp, maybe three and a half feet, was brilliant yellow. “This’s called a contact zone,” Sara told us. “What it is, is a safety zone, and it’s on all the go-up obstacles, the A-frame here, and the dogwalk, and the others. And the whole point of it is, if you let the dogs go crashing up onto the obstacles and jumping off, before long, you’re going to ruin your dog, because his bones and joints aren’t built to take that kind of punishment. Everything’s set real low right now, because these guys are beginners, but for competition, the ramps of the A-frame are up about forty-five degrees, and the apex, the top of it’s a little more than six feet above the ground.” Sara pointed to Rowdy, Bingo, and pretty Jacob. “Take these big guys. You let these big guys go crashing up and down, and in the short term, you’re going to have an accident, and in the long ran, you’re going to wreck your dog, and it might not seem like it, but the same thing applies to the little fellows, too.” As if bored with the safety lecture and ready for action, Phyllis’s bright-eyed Nigel frisked around and bounced toward Sara. “You want to get going, huh?” Sara asked the Pomeranian. To Phyllis, she said, “Bring him over here. You got food? Everybody got food? Okay. I’ll be real quick. Plain buckle collars. No chokes. Go easy, easy. Real gradual. In competition, he’s got to put at least one of his feet in that contact zone, and you’re going to want that speed, but for now, you want precision, so make sure he’s in the contact zone. And keep it fun! Lots of food! And easy does it!”
    After the little introduction, Sara quickly divided us into groups. To my