Bloodlines

the AKC rules on registration, breeder means the person who owned the puppy’s dam when she was bred, unless the dam was leased at the time of breeding. In that case, breeder means the lessee.
    My father continued. “Princess Melissa Sievers. The breeder is this Walter Simms you asked me about. The owner is Edgar Sievers. No transfers, nothing else.”
    “And Simms? Did you find out...?”
    “I had a hard time prying this much out of her. They’re getting more close-mouthed down there than they used to be.”
    “It’s okay,” I said. “This is a lot. It’s a big help. Thank you.”
    When I hung up, those tall New England trees finally took root. The horizon narrowed and rose behind fat-bellied Walter Simms. A breeder like Lois Metzler or Betty Burley might well ship a bitch across the country to be bred to the perfect stud. Leasing might be part of the arrangement. But Rinehart? Although he lived nearby, Lois and I had never heard of him; in the world of malamutes, he was no one. I finally got it. People like that don’t lease their bitches to breeders halfway across the country. Why would they? If Rinehart had leased Icekist Sissy, then the lessee, the sow-faced, femalebreasted Walter Simms, wasn’t some puppy farmer in the Midwest. Toto was a Cairn, of course, not a malamute, but I spoke Dorothy’s words aloud to Rowdy and Kimi: “Guys,” I said sadly, “something tells me we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
     

20
     

     
    If you’ve ever consulted the USDA list of puppy mill operators and brokers—pardon me once again, Class A and B animal dealers—you’ll understand why I rechecked the damned thing. There are so many thousands of people listed that any one name is easy to miss. Last time, I’d started with the nearby states. If Walter Simms’s name had been there, my fresh eyes and brain should have caught it, but, then again, I’d expected to find it, if at all, in the notorious Big Six—Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma—or possibly in Illinois, Indiana, Colorado, Minnesota, the Dakotas, or Pennsylvania, anywhere but right here in New England. This time, I began with Class A dealers in Massachusetts. Simms wasn’t listed. Then I turned to Massachusetts B dealers. Walter Simms wasn’t one. But Rinehart was. Like a lot of other dealers, Rinehart had a blank to the right of his name, under the heading “Doing business as,” but an address is evidently mandatory-Rinehart’s was 688 Boston Road, Westbrook. Westbrook? Coakley. Your Local Breeder. The same. How had I missed it the first time? By scanning five or six thousand names. By ignoring addresses.
    NYNEX information for Westbrook had no listing for a Joseph Rinehart. In an effort to spare myself the drive out there, I also tried the Boston yellow pages under pet shops, kennels, kennel supplies, animal transportation, and a couple of other headings, but neither Rinehart’s name nor the address in Westbrook appeared. I wanted to stay home with Rowdy and Kimi, and, to tell the truth, I didn’t want to groom them, train, or even write about them. I was halfway through Donald McCaig’s Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men: Searching Through Scotland for a Border Collie. I ached to lie in bed with the book in my hands and my dogs at my feet.
    Reluctant and tired, I went anyway. Enthusiastic and energetic, so did Rowdy and Kimi. Afraid to drive alone at night on dark country roads? Get a dog! Better yet, get two! The song says that you’ll never walk alone. As it neglects to point out, you’ll never drive alone, either. Anyway, dark it was. By the time we crossed into Westbrook, the night was so black that I had trouble shaking the perception that my headlights were failing. Whenever a car approached and I courteously switched from high to low beams, the road ahead looked like an unilluminated tunnel with invisible walls. Then, as soon as the car passed, I’d put on the high beams again, not just to see where I was going but to reassure myself that the headlamp bulbs hadn’t suddenly burned out.
    Before leaving home, I’d consulted the map of Westbrook in the Universal Atlas and discovered that Boston Road was the same one I’d followed to the turnoff for Bill Coakley’s just the day before, the pretty-here, ugly-there route that the stagecoaches between Westbrook and Boston must have taken two hundred years ago. Now, though, the night hid yesterday’s low hills and stretches of woods, and the tiny windows of the