Bloodlines

Barbara. She has shepherds. (Foreigner? German shepherd dogs. Good ones, too.) She’s a few years older than I am, I think— maybe in her midthirties?—and she’s kind of frail and romantic looking. We train together at the Cambridge Dog Training Club.
    “I happened to be at Puppy Luv this morning,” she said flatly. Like most experienced dog handlers, Barbara has complete control of her tone of voice: Even though she must have known what to expect from me, she did not sound ashamed, apologetic, defensive, or challenging. Puppy Luv is a Cambridge pet shop that sells my living birthright for a mess of green pottage, lots of green pottage, but pottage nonetheless.
    My own control slipped. I may even have yelled. In fact, I’m sure I did, because Rowdy and Kimi, who’d been enjoying a morning doze on the kitchen floor, opened their gorgeous brown eyes and lifted their beautiful heads. Anyway, what I yelled was: “What were you doing there?” Barbara Doyle isn’t a pet shop kind of person. In fact, she’s a sire-won-the-national-specialty, dam-went-Best-of-Opposite-at-Westminster kind of person.
    “Ran out of food,” Barbara said, meaning, of course, dog food and not just any old kibble, either, but premium chow. “I know, I know,” she added, anticipating the lecture that was already dripping from my lips like drool from the mouth of a Newfoundland. “I got the smallest bag they had. I never buy from that place. The point is, you do malamute rescue, don’t you?”
    “A little,” I said. “Hardly any.” I’d placed a few malamutes, sure, but most of my so-called rescue work had consisted of racking up giant phone bills while failing to find good homes for great dogs. Alaskan malamutes are big and strong, and, of course, they shed their coats, but that’s not why they’re hard to place. All rescue dogs, including all purebreds, are hard to place, all for the same reason: They aren’t puppies.
    “Well, there’s a malamute at Puppy Luv,” Barbara said. “I thought you might want to know.”
    “Damn.” Buy on impulse, neglect at leisure. That’s the real motto of every pet shop that sells dogs. “Damn it,” I said. “Are you sure it’s a malamute?”
    The question wasn’t quite as stupid as it probably sounds. Alaskan malamutes are much bigger and brawnier than Siberian huskies. A malamute’s ears are set on the sides of the head, but a Siberian’s ears are set high, and a Siberian’s ears are fairly large in proportion to the size of the head, too, medium size, not smallish like a malamute’s. A Siberian has a fox tail, like a brush, but a mal’s tail is plumed and carried over the back. A Siberian has blue eyes or brown eyes or even one blue and one brown, but all malamutes have brown eyes. In brief, the two breeds are nothing alike, totally distinct,
    impossible to confuse, except—well, except that a great big brown-eyed Siberian husky looks quite a bit like a small malamute with a tail and ears that don’t conform to the breed standard.
    “According to the sign,” Barbara said. “And it’s a big puppy.”
    “Brown eyes?”
    “Yeah. I took a good look. I just thought you might want to know.”
    “I do,” I said mechanically. “Thanks.”
    Now that I knew, I’d have to do something. Or do nothing. Neither prospect felt good. Do you understand why? If so, and especially if you love dogs, stick around anyway, huh? It started that Friday morning in February when Barbara Doyle called to tell me about a malamute for sale in a pet shop. It ended less than a week later. If a dog had died during that time, I’d warn you right now. I promise. I wouldn’t want to hear about it, either, you know. I wouldn’t ask you to listen. Honest to God spelled backward.
     

2
     

     
    “Barbara could be wrong, you know,” I told Rowdy and Kimi, who sat directly in front of me as I stroked their white throats. As I often remind them, they are certainly the two most beautiful and intelligent Alaskan malamutes in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and possibly in the entire world.
    After I’d hung up the phone, I went into the bathroom to wash my face in cold water. Then I returned to the kitchen and reseated myself at the table, where I discovered that one of the two most beautiful and intelligent Alaskan malamutes in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and possibly in the entire world, had emptied the cup of milky tea I’d carelessly left in reach. Wet tan splotches dotted my pages of notes about