Bloodlines

And there she’d been, ugly Gloria. Of course it had been a symbolic act. When I’d stopped to pick her up in Medford, I’d intended to beard one of those satanic animal liberationists in my own woofy den. Just force one of those bastards to meet my dogs and spend some time with us! Training is cruelty? Let the son of a bitch watch Kimi stubbornly refuse to go indoors until we’ve done our obedience work. And the joyful grin on Rowdy’s face when he finds his dumbbell and soars back over the high jump? Or let anyone, absolutely anyone, just hang around with us, listen to us, watch us, learn who we really are, homo sapiens, canis familiaris, two species delicately evolved in unison, biologically distinct, behaviorally meshed, the only two species to keep one another as companion animals. People keep cats and birds, too, of course, but dogs are more loyal to us than we are to them. We are uniquely theirs. Without us, there would be no dogs. Without them, we would be less human than we are now. No one should miss this transcendent miracle. No one but Gloria Loss, who didn’t need to learn that my dogs and I loved one another more than anyone had ever loved her.
    Fifteen minutes after we’d crossed Mass. Ave., Gloria stood awkwardly in the bright light of my kitchen. Faith’s description had been accurate, and so had Lois Metzler’s: Gloria was short, dark, and damp. Her hair had been treated with some oily gel or mousse that forced her thick locks to fall depressingly forward and downward. The paisley skirt Faith had mentioned was, in fact, the bottom half of a long, unflattering dress in shades of mustard, black, and navy. It dripped onto heavy hiking boots that had absorbed the rain. The raw, inflamed lesions that covered her face made it hard to see past her skin to the person inside.
    The beauty of dogs, though, is that if Gloria had had two or three heads, each as repulsive as the first, Rowdy and Kimi would have welcomed her with the same enthusiasm they now displayed. They’d both had a brief trip to the fenced-in yard, and now Rowdy, who had, of course, already met Gloria, was sprawled on his back on the floor, his mouth open in a toothy smile, his legs wiggling foolishly in the air in anticipation of chest-scratching and tummy-rubbing that Gloria failed to offer. Kimi sat neatly in front of Gloria and kept lifting her right forepaw, but Gloria missed or refused that invitation, too.
    “He wants you to rub his belly,” I translated. “And she wants to shake hands.”
    “This is an undignified way to make animals act,” she told me.
    “I didn’t teach Rowdy that. It’s just something malamutes do. Lots of dogs do it, but it’s a malamute specialty. And there’s nothing undignified about shaking hands. Pawing at people is a spontaneous behavior.
    They do it for attention. They do it for lots of reasons. And they happen to like learning to do it the way she’s doing it now, at least when they get a civilized response in return.” Kimi’s pretty eyes were puzzled. I was annoyed. “Damn it, give her your hand! She doesn’t understand why you’re ignoring her.” Then I paused and said, “Never mind. I’m going to feed them. You’d better get out of the way.”
    I fastened Rowdy to a leash at one end of the kitchen, Kimi to a leash at the other end. Then I dished out two helpings of premium chow and fed the dogs. Gloria almost certainly disapproved, but if I don’t tie up the dogs, the one who finishes first tries to steal the other one’s food, and we end up with a mess of kibble scattered all over the linoleum and a snarling tangle of dogs.
    When the dogs had finished eating, Gloria, who’d taken a seat at the table, said, “They’re still hungry. You didn’t give them very much.”
    As I unhitched the dogs, I said, “It’s concentrated food. I use a measuring cup. They both have a tendency to put on weight, so the main thing is not to feed them too much. In terms of health, overfeeding is almost as bad as underfeeding. Um, would you like something to eat?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m hungry. I’ll make us both sandwiches. And then we need to have a talk.”
    My cheese sandwiches are a lot better than the ones you buy at dog shows. In other words, mine aren’t soggy, they don’t taste as if they’d been made a month to advance, and the cheese is identifiable as such. As you probably know, in addition to producing dog and cat food, the big pet food companies