Bloodlines

Luv? When John Sweet reopened the pet shop two weeks after his wife’s murder, I tried to talk him into letting me leave some breed and obedience-training information with the puppy’s papers, but he refused. One day in Harvard Square, though, I happened to spot the puppy, and I talked to the couple who bought her. The wife is an assistant professor of economics at Harvard, and the husband has a Ph.D. in biology. Educated people, right? And decent people, too. But when they came to my house to meet Rowdy and Kimi and to pick up some information about malamutes, I tried to suggest that they might consider buying their puppy chow someplace other than Puppy Luv. I explained that pet shops that sell dogs support the puppy mill industry. A Harvard professor and a Ph.D., right? Economics and biology. They asked me what a puppy mill was. Believe me, I told them. They listened, too.
    And you? We can close the puppy mills, you know, we really can. The AKC won’t do it, and the USDA won’t do it. We will. Remember, we’re everyone, and we’re everywhere, and, before long, none of us will buy so much as a single morsel of premium kibble from a pet shop that sells dogs. Peace will come. Let it begin with us.
     

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
     
    SUSAN CONANT, the recipient of 1991 and 1992 Maxwell Awards for Fiction Writing, lives in Massachusetts with her husband, two cats, and an Alaskan malamute. Her work has been published in Pure-Bred Dogs / American Kennel Gazette and DOGworld. She is a member of the Alaskan Malamute Club of America and is the state coordinator of the Alaskan Malamute Protection league.
     

If you enjoyed Susan Conant’s BLOODLINES, you’ll want to read her latest dog lover’s mystery,
     
    STUD RITES
     
    available now in paperback from Bantam Books Look for it at your bookstore!