Bloodlines

I said. “Uh, you, uh, called about your dog?”
    “Missy is an Alaskan malamute.” She sounded as if she were reciting something she’d memorized. “She is a registered purebred dog. Are you sure you won’t have a caramel?” She pursed her lips and stared at me.
    I cleared my throat. “No, thanks,” I repeated, pulling myself out of the depths of the love seat. “About Missy?”
    Enid Sievers met my gaze. “This isn’t easy for me,” she said. “She was Edgar’s dog, really.” Her eyes were nearly tearful.
    I helped her out. “But she’s the wrong dog for you.”
    Her face brightened. “That’s it,” she said. “That’s just it. She’s the wrong dog for me.” Enid Sievers and her jam-packed room cried out for a Pekingese, a Pomeranian, a Maltese, a toy poodle, a Shih Tzu, any of dozens of tiny breeds. “Would you rather have a chocolate? And I have some very nice pralines that my sister just sent me from Florida.” She half rose in apparent search of them.
    “No,” I said firmly. “No thanks. Do you think I could take a look at Missy?”
    “Well, of course,” Enid Sievers answered, reseating herself opposite me, “I feel terrible about this, you know, but when Mrs. Burley heard about Missy, she was so thrilled! And I realized, well, Missy will really have a better life there. So it’s really better for everyone.”
    “We’ll find a good home for her,” I said.
    Enid Sievers’s eyes focused on some apparition behind my head, but her correction was almost sharp-“Oh, you don’t need to find a home for her. Mrs. Burley is very anxious to have her.” Now she surveyed me as if in search of signs of mental deficiency. “Mrs. Burley raises Alaskan malamutes, you know,” she informed me. “And Missy is an outstanding specimen of the breed. Edgar always said so, and he was very knowledgeable.”
    “I’m sure he was. Do you think I could take a look at her?” Show me the dog!
    “Well, of course,” she said, but retained her ladylike pose on the couch.
    I found myself glancing around. As you probably know, malamutes are among the few creatures on earth that never talk unless they have something to say. Consequently, they often remain silent for hours. On the other hand, most of them are almost ridiculously friendly. I began to feel alarmed. If, in fact, Missy were tucked behind one of the couches, chairs, or love seats or hidden under one of the dozens of tables, there must be something horribly wrong with her.
    “Mrs. Sievers,” I said in my firmest dog-training voice, “where is Missy?”
    Enid Sievers gestured vaguely toward the back of the house and asked, “Or maybe you’d like a chocolate-covered cherry?”
    “Thank you,” I said. “Maybe later. Right now, I’d like to see Missy.” Then I finally caught on. “Mrs. Sievers, would you like me to get her?”
    “Would you? I have a terrible time with her.” Her odd, vaguely mechanical voice was pitifully grateful, and she finally rose from the couch and gestured to me to follow. As I trailed after her through a furniture-Packed dining room and into an out-of-date, surprisingly bare lime green kitchen, she went on about her troubles with the dog. “She’s knocked me over five or six times! And I know she doesn’t mean it, it’s just that she’s terribly strong, and, of course she’s very young and so vigorous! And I know she misses Edgar—he used to take her for her walkies every morning and twice at night, when he was able. Edgar worshipped this dog— and I’ve hired a boy to walk her, and that helps, but it’s not enough! And I can’t let her run through the house, can I? Just imagine!”
    And I did. Candy dishes emptied and smashed, porcelain figures flying, lamps crashing to the floor, tea tables toppled... How the hell had a malamute ever ended up in this worse-than-a-china-shop? I knew the answer, of course: Puppy Luv, that’s how.
    Mostly because I’d entirely dismissed Enid Sievers’s claim that Missy was an outstanding specimen of the breed, I expected to see the opposite: a tiny “malamute” with some obvious Siberian husky in her; or maybe a grotesquely oversized monster with bad hips; or simply a poor specimen, a malamute with a snap tail and coat; or perhaps a wooley. A wooley? That’s a malamute with a really long, shaggy coat. Woolies are spectacularly pretty, but that coat isn’t what the standard calls for, so you can’t show woolies in the breed ring. Anyway, Missy wasn’t one.