Black Ribbon

how I’d written it. To Cam, a more accomplished obedience handler and a far greater legal expert on the sport than I’ll ever be, Eva said just about nothing. Ginny’s response to Eva was a little hard to interpret. That Ginny hated the sight of Eva was clear. Ginny’s friendly, ruddy face hardened and faded into what looked like a death mask. Even the braid around her head seemed to turn to clay. I wasn’t sure whether this transformation was merely Ginny’s habitual response to Eva or whether it represented a specific reaction to Eva’s disgusting attack of writer worship. In any case, Cam and Ginny rapidly made their escape down the road.
    Eva’s unhappy victim, I remained as pinned as if she’d held a knife to my belly. My cheeks froze in the kind of quirky half-smile that you see on a dog who’s just about to vomit. Not content with falling all over me, Eva had to fawn over Rowdy, who will strut, preen, cajole, offer his paw, bat his eyes, sing ah-roos and woo-woo-woos, and, if necessary, fall to the ground and wave his silly big legs in the air to elicit the merest glance of genuine admiration, but who would have nothing of Eva Spitteler and her phony flattery. Bingo, too, was aloof and subdued, altogether a different creature from yesterday’s lunger and the past hour’s A-frame bounder. Tempting though it is to suggest that the big Lab was sympathetically mimicking his owner’s change in attitude, I must report that the real cause of Bingo’s sudden transformation was undoubtedly the heavy-duty pinch collar that now encircled his neck. I wondered whether Maxine McGuire or someone else had ordered Eva to keep Bingo under control.
    Eva must have followed my eyes. “I never use that thing,” she said.
    Except right now, I wanted to add. Instead, I said, “I’m not crazy about them, but I use one if I have to.” As you probably know, a pinch collar, otherwise known as prong collar, consists of interlocked metal links. When the handler tightens the collar, the points of the links, the prongs, pinch the dog’s neck. It’s a high-powered and somewhat controversial piece of training equipment, totally banned by some obedience clubs, highly recommended by others. I explained: “Sometimes I help with Malamute Rescue, and if I get a really big, totally untrained dog, sometimes I have to use a pinch collar, or I can’t even take the dog for a walk.”
    “Well,” Eva confided, “the truth is that’s more or less my situation with Bingo, not that he’s untrained or anything— he: 's really very, very good—but when I got him... Really, what he is, is a rescue dog. I had no idea at the time, but the breeder I went to does not socialize her puppies, and she breeds dozens of litters, and, believe me, she charges big bucks, too. This woman has a big, big reputation, and I paid a fortune for pick of the litter, and how was I supposed to know?”
    I shrugged. The unnamed breeder was, of course, Ginny Garabedian.
    Eva resumed: “And right from the beginning, I had to work my ass off trying to make up for what that poor puppy had been through, nobody touching him, nobody even speaking a kind word to him, if you ask me. And I still keep thinking, I should’ve known, because when I got there, I wanted to see her kennels, and she would not let me back there. And now I know why, because her house wasn’t exactly clean, but, back there, it’s filthy. And from what I hear, nobody but nobody gets back there.”
    Then how did anyone but Ginny know what condition the kennels were in? I didn’t ask. “Maybe the breeder’s just trying to protect the puppies,” I told Eva. “People can track in anything. They don’t even have to handle the puppies; they can bring things in on their shoes.” Well-meaning visitors can wipe out whole litters by infecting puppies with parvo, distemper, or any number of other diseases.
    “Yeah, but that’s not why,” Eva insisted. “What I know now is, she’s got thirty or forty dogs back there, and she never cleans up. What the place is, is just a puppy mill. ”
    According to my strict definition, a puppy mill is a wholesale commercial kennel that mass-produces puppies for resale in pet shops. Every once in a while, the fancy discovers in its midst a well-respected breeder whose dirty, crowded, disease-ridden kennel is no better than a puppy mill. Like Masons who find that a member has revealed the secrets of the order, dog fancy henceforth deems such a person, as