Black Ribbon

of his way to avoid getting plowed over. As Rowdy soared past and headed directly for Jacob, I could almost hear the fight begin. I could almost see the hideous tangle of snarling malamute and outraged Akita, the flashing teeth, the terrified efforts to separate the dogs, the unintended bites, the mauled and broken human arms.
    But Jacob was, indeed, the Gandhi of dogs. I managed to grab Rowdy’s lead. When I hauled him in, away from Bingo, I saw what had delayed Rowdy in the tunnel. Tail soaring back and forth, eyes smiling, Rowdy proudly displayed the treasure he’d found: Clamped between his jaws was a big rawhide chew toy. Faced with a rawhide-bearing male malamute speeding directly at him, almost any other Akita I’d ever known would have gone for the rawhide, and the other dog be damned.
    I let out a deep sigh. By now, Michael had moved Jacob a few yards away. “That could’ve been close,” I said.
    “What’s going on?” Heather asked.
    I explained. “That’s not, uh, intentional, is it? Leaving rawhide in the tunnel? Because—”
    “Hey, we’re not crazy.” Heather shook her head. “You start some kind of Easter egg hunt with rawhide all over the place, and sooner or later, all you’re going to end up with is a fight. Who put that thing there, anyway?” Before anyone had a chance to answer, Heather added, “You know, this is going to be a problem for a while. Every time Rowdy goes through the tunnel, he’s going to be looking for more rawhide, and it’s going to slow him down. You’re going to have to work on that.”
    “Fine,” I said meekly. As I started to ask Heather about the commands to use in telling the dog which obstacle to head for, Eva and Bingo once again diverted her. The diversion was not, I should point out, Bingo’s fault. A change in water has that effect on a lot of dogs. Some owners carry a one-liter soda bottle of water with them when they travel, and every time they give some water to their dogs, they refill the bottle, so the dog gradually gets used to the strange water. Or maybe Bingo had a case of nerves. At any rate, he was squatting once again, this time in the woods at the edge of the clearing, and once again, Eva was looking any place and every place else—at Rowdy, at the A-frame, at Nigel, who was making his dainty, precise way down the descent ramp of the low dogwalk toward a happy-looking Phyllis.
    “Do you have a plastic bag with you?” Heather asked. “Or do you need one?”
    Her mind still elsewhere, Eva watched Nicky, Cam’s sheltie, neatly sail through a tire jump.
    “You!” Heather was finally losing patience. “Camp rule: Clean up after your own dog!”
    “Are you talking to me?” demanded Eva, throwing a stubby-fingered hand across her breast. “He’s going in the woods. What’s it matter?”
    “This has been gone over in detail,” Heather replied quietly. “It was in the material you got through the mail, it was in the registration packet you got yesterday, and we discussed it at the meeting yesterday afternoon.”
    The Leona Helmsley of pooper-scooping, Eva was lofty. “I wasn’t there.”
    “And we just talked about it now, before we got started,” Heather persisted. “We leave this place a mess, and camp’s not going to be able to come back here. All over camp, there are bags and scoopers and buckets, and if you don’t use them, among other things, it’s not fair to Maxine. In case you don’t know, it’s not easy to find a good place that welcomes all these dogs, and part of my job’s making sure that when you guys leave here Saturday morning, there’s nothing that anyone’s going to mind stepping in. Now, do you have a plastic bag, or do you need one? They’re right over there by that trash can.” By coincidence, Phyllis Abbott, her hair and makeup fastidious, her white shirt crisp, her white slacks spotless, was heading toward the trash can at exactly the time Heather pointed to it. As if to model responsible dog ownership, she took a clean plastic bag and led Nigel slowly along the edge of the clearing. “Show time!” she told him. “Show time!”
    Attracted perhaps by Heather’s vehement lecture, the entire group was gathering around.
    “Holly?” Joy asked tentatively.
    “Yes?”
    “Is this some kind of...?”
    “It’s nothing,” I said. “There was just a little, uh...”
    “What is ‘show time’? I don’t...”
    I’ll spare you. Yes, it’s possible to teach your dog to eliminate more or