Black Ribbon

either. “Sure,” I said. “Pull up a chair.”
    Cam, Ginny, and Eric scooted over to make room. When Michael had eased a chair and then himself between Eric and me, he gestured toward Eva’s empty place. “You heard some of that, right?”
    “Yes,” I said. “Ignore her, okay?”
    “The thing is,” said Michael, “I’ve got Jacob entered.”
    “Good. This your first trial?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Good!”
    “But the thing is,” Michael repeated, “is anybody going to give me a hard time? About, uh, Jacob? Whether he’s, uh—” Want to get a man where it really hurts? Forget the all-but-painless knee in the groin. What you do is insult his dog. Model Mugging, are you listening?
    “Look,” I said, “in obedience, for all the judge cares, as long as Jacob’s AKC-registered, he can have purple ringlets. Obedience doesn’t have anything to do with the breed standard.”
    Unconvinced, Michael said, “Yeah, but—?”
    “Maybe the judge might ask about his coat, but it’d probably be just, ‘Hey, I’ve never seen one before.’ And even if—” By now, Eric, Cam, and Ginny were listening in. Cam picked up for me. “Even if your judges wonder if he’s purebred, the worst they’re going to do is report it to the trial secretary or the superintendent, and somebody who knows Akitas is going to say he’s an Akita, and that’ll be it. But that’s not going to happen. The most that’s really going to happen is that a judge is just curious, that’s all.” Cam brightened up. “So where’re you entered?”
    “Long Trail. It’s on the way home.”
    The famous Green Mountain Circuit is in July, of course, but because of certain dog-political controversies dating back so far that no one remembers what they were, the Long Trail Kennel Club does not participate in the cluster. Instead, it holds its show and trial in September, making it one of the last outdoor events of the year.
    “Who’s the judge?” Cam asked.
    “Mrs. Abbott.” Michael sounded as if he’d finally spat out what the thing really was. “Can I just make sure she knows he’s an Akita?”
    “I wouldn’t,” said my mother’s daughter.
    “Oh, for heaven’s sake, why not?” Ginny exclaimed. “Go ahead! Or don’t. Phyllis’ll know, anyway.”
    I hesitated. “Discuss a dog with a judge you’ve got him entered under? This close to the trial date? I don’t know. I just wouldn’t.” In response to Michael’s guilty expression, I added, “It’s okay to talk to her. Anything’s okay, really. I’m just… The only thing you really can’t do is to show under a judge who’s your instructor.”
    Eric, who’d been quietly listening, said, and said wisely, “If everybody who became a judge had to drop out of dogs to avoid hearing anything, there’d be no judges left. What happens is your friends show under you. So do your enemies. So do a lot of people you’ve never seen before and you’re never going to see again. You look at ’em all, you nod your head, and then you get down to business, and you’ve got enough to do looking at dogs without wasting your time on who they belong to.”
    “Well spoken,” said Ginny Garabedian, active breeder and exhibitor of Labrador retrievers, to Eric Grimaldi, who just so happened to judge her Group.
    “So you see?” Cam said lightly. “Eric’s a judge, and Ginny’s a tracking judge, and we treat them just like normal people!”
    Ever the irrepressible educator, Marissa’s daughter, I said, “Cam’s half serious. When you walk into Mrs. Abbott’s ring, you don’t have to pretend you’ve never seen her before.” Catching myself, or rather, nabbing my mother, I added, “And then when she gives you a two hundred and you end up High in Trial—”
    Michael got it. A perfect score—the legendary 200—going for a first Novice A leg? Dream on! Well, maybe it’s happened, but if so, I’m willing to bet that the dog wasn’t an Akita. Or a malamute, either. Regardless of the breed of dog, most first-time handlers are ecstatic just to survive the experience without requiring immediate psychiatric hospitalization or gastrointestinal surgery. High in Trial doesn’t require a 200 score, of course; it means more or less what it sounds like, the highest score at the trial in Novice, Open, or Utility, the regular classes, not Brace or Graduate Novice, which maybe I should point out are called “nonregular” rather than “irregular” classes, there being nothing shady,