Black Ribbon

where the dog should have been faulted, it is evident that the standards of Obedience have been lowered by the judge.” Some judges never give perfect scores; the rest, almost never, and when they do, they do it very, very carefully. I wondered how close to perfection Cam and Nicky had really come at Passaic. Oh, and, of course, I wondered exactly what their score had been, but that means nothing. Obedience addict that I am, I always wonder what people’s scores are—except, alas, my own. Those I know by heart, and all too well.
    Eva’s scream interrupted my thoughts. “Oh, shit! Listen to this!” She brandished one of the photocopies. Lowering it to eye level, she read, “ Black ribbon. What the hell does that mean?”
    The term isn’t all that common. I started to explain: “A tribute to a dead—”
    “Black ribbon, ” Eva repeated indignantly. “Listen to this! It says: Condolences to Eva Spitteler on the sudden loss of her three-year-old Labrador retriever, Benchenfield Farmer’s Dog.” Eva’s voice dropped. “That’s Bingo.”
    “No kidding,” someone muttered.
    Eva resumed her reading. “It’s always sad to report one of these, especially when the tragedy could so easily have been prevented.” Eva’s face, never exactly attractive, was contorted with rage. “What the shit’s that supposed to mean? That I left him shut up in a hot car? What the—”
    When my mother died, all the dog magazines wrote about her, and every time I came across the words of sympathy, I felt as if I’d just heard news that couldn’t possibly be true. Again and again, I’d read, “With the passing of Marissa Winter, the Fancy mourns the loss of a great lady,” and I’d want to shout, “No! Not true!” But then my eyes would fill with tears, and time after time, I’d learn of her death for the first time. The death of a dog, of course, is like the death of a mother, but simpler, therefore much worse, like the death of a child, pure grief. After my last golden, Vinnie, died, every card, every note, every phone call, every hand on my shoulder broke the news again. What truly consoled me was Rowdy, a dog totally different from Vinnie, but a dog, even so. And Marissa? Many dogs, one mother.
    Eva’s rage? The familiar outrage: No! Not MY dog! It’s a hoax! It’s a cruel hoax. In Eva’s case, it really was a hoax. The feeling, I thought, was identical.
    Looking down at the photocopy on the table, I scanned for familiar names. Mine, maybe? Not that I could find. But Don Abbott’s was there, and so was John R.B. White’s. I put my finger on it and asked Cam whether she’d seen it. She nodded. The item was trivial. According to Dog Beat, John R.B., her husband, was widely considered a young Turk at the AKC and a threat to conservative types like Don Abbott. If so, Dog Beat wondered, why had John R.B. and Don Abbott been spotted together at so many shows this year? The only noteworthy feature of the item, I thought, was the absence of any reference to Phyllis Abbott’s supposed death. But the inconsistency wasn’t surprising; Dog Beat’s editing was always lousy.
    Cam turned a few pages and asked, “Did you see this?” Her perfectly filed nail tapped the paper midway down the page.
    “No,” I said.
    “Well, read it.”
    Most of Dog Beat’s columns appeared under pen names. No self-respecting writer would want to admit to having produced such trash, but then no self-respecting writer would have thought about contributing to Dog Beat in the first place. I suspected that the real purpose of the pseudonyms wasn’t so much to let the writers save face or to let them escape responsibility for what they wrote as it was to fool the readership into believing that Dog Beat employed a multitude of contributors. All ten or twelve toxic columns, I thought, actually oozed from the slimy digits of only two or three people. In truth, what offended me about Dog Beat, in addition to its viciousness, was its blatant failure to fill what I’ve always perceived a major gap in the dog-writing market. Aspiring canine journalist, are you? Well, the next time you find yourself stuck in line at the supermarket, run your eyes over the racks of tabloids, and read therein your own future. Indeed, The Canine Enquirer! Really, consider the possibilities. Each issue would practically write itself. Day-Old Siamese-Twin Basenjis Whelp Litters of Three-Headed Pups. Amazed owner says, “And they're just the sweetest little bitty