Bloodlines

195 or higher in each trial. 195? You’re kidding. Where are you from, anyway? Neptune? Mars? Well, welcome to Sirius, the dog star. That’s 195 out of a perfect 200.
    “Bernie Brown better watch himself,” Buck said happily.
    Bernie Brown, in case you don’t already know, is a top handler and a famous obedience instructor. Needless to say, Bernie Brown does not have malamutes. In fact, a quote from one of Bernie Brown’s books is tacked to the bulletin board in my study: “Malamutes make excellent pets, but I wouldn’t want to train one.” What breed does Bernie Brown have? Take a wild guess.
    To avoid undermining my father’s self-confidence by offering an estimate of his chances against Bernie Brown, and also to get to the point of my call, I said, “So has Jim Chevigny seen her yet? Or Marian Duckworth?”
    Jim and Marian are two of Buck’s oldest friends. He has a lot of friends. These two happen to work at the AKC, and they don’t sweep the floors there, either.
    “As a matter of fact, Marian was at the club last week,” Buck said. That’s the Mid-Coast Obedience Club. I was astounded. To the best of my knowledge, Buck hadn’t trained there since Marissa died. “Jaw dropped open when she saw this little lady work,” he went on. “Dropped open and just hung like that. You’d’ve thought she was waiting for the dentist.”
    Mandy’s heeling is impressive, of course. Well, damn it, she’s a golden. What do you expect? But Marian Duckworth has seen lots of perfect heeling. What had astonished Marian had certainly been my father’s sudden return to apparent normality.
    “Well, maybe you could ask Marian something for me,” I said. “Or Jim Chevigny. Or someone else. I need a favor.”
    Sympathy filled Buck’s voice. “It’s this X, isn’t it?” he asked gently. That’s the X in C.D.X., Companion Dog Excellent, Rowdy’s next obedience title.
    “NO!” I answered more sharply than I’d intended.
    I softened my tone. “We’re working on it. We’ll get there.”
    “Never be ashamed to ask for help, Holly,” he said. “No one knows everything. We all have a lot to learn. Now, I, for example, have given a lot of thought to that last column of yours.”
    Buck almost never admits to reading my column, but I know he does because he invariably drops minor corrections into our conversations. As it turned out, though, the gist of his “thought” about the column was that I lacked the spirit of healthy competition that he and Marissa had worked so hard to instill. In the column, which was about non-AKC titles granted by national breed clubs, I’d mentioned an Alaskan malamute called Clifford. Clifford, who is owned by Robin Haggard and Jim Kuehl, is, in fact, Am./Can. Ch. Poker Flats Ace of Spies, C.D., W.P.D., W.W.P.D., W.T.D., W.L.D. Translation? American and Canadian Champion, in other words, breed champion; Companion Dog; and Working Pack Dog, Working Weight Pull Dog, Working Team Dog, Working Lead Dog. The Working titles were what the column was about; they’re granted by the Alaskan Malamute Club of America, not the AKC. Buck’s complaint was that I hadn’t put a single one of those Working titles on either of my dogs.
    “Now take this Working Pack Dog title,” Buck said. “If I understand this correctly, the requirement—”
    “Buck, I have other things to worry about right now. I don’t really need any help putting titles on my dogs. What I need is some information about a registration. I need to know what the AKC has on a malamute called, uh, Icekist Sissy.”
    “Well, Icekist,” Buck said. “That’s Lois Metzler.”
    “I know. She’s the breeder, but what I want is the owner, anything about the owner, like an address, and also anything about changes of ownership. Also, have you ever heard of someone named Walter Simms?”
    “Simms. Used to be a fellow up near Rangeley. English setters, he had. There was one called Ranger—” Once Buck starts to describe a dog, you have to choose between cutting him off immediately or listening for the next hour. “That was Simpson,” I said. “Harry Simpson. He died in a plane crash about ten years ago.”
    “Harry. That was it. Never heard about it.” Buck sounded alarmed and grieved. “Damn shame. That dog, Ranger, was—”
    But I was able to reassure him. “The dog wasn’t with him,” I said. “He was alone.”
    “Even so, the poor fellow,” Buck said, as if to accuse me of gross insensitivity. “Abandoned