Black Ribbon

brand-new.
    “Michael,” I said quietly, “are you sure that this is your lead?”
     

 
    PROPPED ON AN EASEL at the entrance to the dining room was a cork bulletin board. It displayed a big, bright advertisement for the camp store, an amateurish but enthusiastic-looking reminder about Canine Good Citizen testing, and an unobtrusive announcement of the cancellation of two other events scheduled for the afternoon, something called “Terrier Fun,” and a workshop on spinning and weaving dog hair. I didn’t really mind missing either. For all I knew, Terrier Fun consisted of coaching bold little scrappers in new and yet more senseless ways to take on malamutes. As for spinning and weaving, Rowdy and Kimi undoubtedly had a greater aptitude for producing the raw material than I did for fashioning it into garments in which anyone might want to be seen. Also tacked to the board was a sheet of white paper that proclaimed in the emphatic red capitals of a felt-tipped pen: “UNSUPERVISED USE OF THE AGILITY AREA IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN!”
    As I started to enter the dining room, Maxine came up in back of me and demanded, “Didn’t you just love agility?”
    Mindful of my instructions from Bonnie, Max’s dear friend, I compliantly said that indeed, Rowdy and I had both loved agility and that, if anything, he was having even more fun than I was. That latter part of my remark was perfectly true. The rawhide bone in the tunnel had been an outright treat. Neither the sympathy cards nor the casket and headstone ads nor the scary clippings about dangers and diseases nor Jacob’s broken lead had bothered Rowdy at all. He wouldn’t have liked having his own scent articles treated with Bitter Apple, but a nasty taste in another dog’s mouth was no concern of his.
    “It’s so marvelous , ” said Max, “to watch all my dreams becoming a reality.”
    All my dreams becoming a reality? Ever since Rita and I became friends, it has often occurred to me that the average nonpsychotherapeutic person—myself, for instance—lives in what sometimes feels like unremitting need of Rita’s professional advice. I seldom have trouble telling whether someone is cracking up; all too often, the break is disconcertingly obvious. What I never know is how I’m supposed to respond. Lacking professional training, I fall back on lies. “It must be wonderful,” I told Max. If I’d been Rita, and Max had walked into my office and said that camp was going great, I’d probably have made exactly the same reply.
    As I was wondering whether any of the medications in Rowdy’s first-aid kit would do as a reality-sharpener for human beings, Eva Spitteler waddled up, planted herself in front of Max and me, and, feet spread, arms akimbo, began to tell Max almost everything I’d kept to myself. “I can take a joke with the best of them,” Eva began, “but some of the shit that’s going on around here is no joke. Take this.” She rummaged around in the pocket of her shorts and produced yet another of the sympathy cards, this one heavily dusted with the residue of dog treats. “It was shoved under my door, and I don’t like that one damn bit, and all the other shit about dog funerals and bloat and all that other crap is goddamn depressing; and then on top of it, half of what was in your brochure has been canceled, or it’s just sort of disappeared between the time I sent you a fat check and the time I got here. Like tracking. Tracking’s not some kind of an obscure thing to do with a dog, and it’s in the brochure, and I show up here all ready to get Bingo started tracking, and I’ve got a tracking lead and tracking harness, and I look over the schedule, and well, well, big surprise! No tracking. And instead of advanced obedience, everyone’s lumped together, and the whole idea was that we get to try everything, and everyone’s giving me this shit about staying with what I started and not moving around; and every time I turn around, someone’s yelling at me about scooping up poop, and I have really had it! Because I did not pay all this money and drive all this way to spend a week sitting around and cleaning up dog shit!”
    With that, Eva stomped through the French doors that led to the dining room.
    “Her mother,” Maxine remarked placidly, “should’ve taken one look and culled that one.”
    Cull. In one sense, every breeder does it: separates out the puppies with obvious faults and problems. In another sense, an ethical breeder