Bloodlines

yard, nowhere near the house. If she’d had near neighbors, the distance would have made sense. Malamutes aren’t silent, of course, and, like all other dogs, they have fantastic hearing. For instance, if you so much as think about feeding them, they hear the whir of your mental wheels, and they start roaring and wooing. But Lois’s house had a pond on one side, woods on the other, and an empty pasture across the road. In any case, I reached the door unheralded, and even when Lois opened it and led me through a small trophy-laden den to her bright, cramped kitchen, there still wasn’t a dog to be heard or even smelled. I mean, a whole kennelful out there in the backyard? And not one dog in the house? Yes, acute self-inflicted auditory and olfactory deprivation. The only sound in the house came from a radio tuned to a country station.
    Lois, though, looked reassuringly normal, and her kitchen was outright supernormal, which is to say that almost every object that could possibly bear the image of an Alaskan malamute did so. Lois herself bore only one: Smack on the front of Lois’s gigantic blue denim tent dress, an embroidered malamute happily rested his life-size head on the generous cushion of her bosom. The selection of breed-adorned garments in size Queen XXL Tall is probably quite limited, and I wondered whether that enforced near-sterility in personal adornment might explain the population explosion in Lois’s kitchen. On the walls hung two malamute posters, a malamute calendar, and two framed needlepoint pictures of guess what. Malamute potholders and a malamute dishtowel dangled from magnetized malamute hooks on the stove. On the front of the white refrigerator, additional malamute magnets held sheets of lined paper from malamute memo pads. A malamute apron hung on the back door, on the floor beneath which rested a malamute door mat. Yet another malamute grinned at me from the toaster cover, and the same dog also tried to disguise the identity of a box of tissues. Piled on a counter were malamute place mats, and malamute mugs and glasses drained in the sink. You think I’m done? Switch-plate covers, doorstops, a tote bag, candles, two candy dishes, and decals on every pane of every window. Oh, and the walls were plain white. I concluded that Alaskan malamute wallpaper didn’t exist. Yet. But the demand is there, of course. It’s definitely there. And, in case you think I’m making fun of Lois, let me point out that anyone who was sponsoring a contest among her own body parts to decide which one would win a tattoo of two Alaskan malamutes was not in a position to accuse other people of excessive breed loyalty. Okay?
    “My God,” I said, tucking my Alaskan malamute key ring into my shoulder bag, “where did you find all this?” I took off my parka to reveal my new yellow malamute sweatshirt. My question, by the way, was perfectly serious. If you have chows, cockers, goldens, shepherds, Yorkies, or some other really popular breed, or if your breed is considered highly decorative—Scotties, Dalmatians, and Labs—it’s pretty easy to have a generic picture of your dog on practically any object you want. A Dalmatian shower curtain with matching towels and washcloths? Of course. But just try to find a Chinese crested shower curtain, a Border collie towel, or a malamute facecloth, never mind a whole set of coordinated bath accessories.
    “I hunt around,” Lois said, “but, of course, half of the stuff I see, I won’t buy. The malamutes look like Siberians or God knows what else. Coffee?”
    I accepted the offer and took a seat at the table, which had a couple of places cleared for eating, but seemed mainly to serve as Lois’s desk. Stacks of typed pages, newsletters, premiums lists for shows, and issues of dog magazines covered most of the surface.
    “That’s my contract right there,” Lois said as she filled two mugs from a miraculously dog-free coffee maker. As I’ve mentioned, Lois grew up in Nashville, and you could hear her hometown in her speech, especially in the soft way she said contract. “You can see for yourself. If they decide to sell the dog, I’ve got first refusal. They need my permission to transfer ownership, and they need it to breed. It’s a standard contract.”
    I glanced at it. Among other things, if the pup had a serious illness at the time of purchase or if the pup developed hip dysplasia within two years, you got a new dog or your money back. Standard? Yes, for an