Bloodlines

getting enough to eat and has a roof of some sort over her head. I wish the same could be said for the dogs.”
    “Has anyone filed any complaints? Has there been any kind of legal—”
    Before I could finish, Mrs. Appleyard huffed indignantly. “In brief, we are in a perfect pickle! You can smell the place from the road, and I’ve heard I don’t know how many secondhand stories about the numbers of dogs there, but I cannot get a firsthand complaint, and it’s impossible to show probable cause because we cannot get onto the property! I am certainly not setting foot there again, not all alone, I promise you.”
    “But at least people are aware of it now,” I said. “I guess that’s a start. I’m concerned because they seem to have malamutes, or Walter does. I got involved because of a rescue dog that originally came from a pet shop. Puppy Luv. I saw the papers. Simms was the breeder. At first, I assumed he must be in Missouri or somewhere, some obvious place like that.”
    “The whole puppy mill industry is undergoing an adaptive metamorphosis, if you will,” said Mrs. Appleyard. “Negative publicity about out-of-state puppies? Then adapt! Raise them locally, under precisely the same conditions, of course. Vermont has a terrible problem now. And New Hampshire. But the pet shops are still bringing in puppies from out of state, of course. And I wish we could assume that the puppy mills are the only source, but there have always been rumors about breeders who sell to these pet shops. They aren’t supposed to, and they hope no one finds out, but it’s been known to happen.”
    “You know,” I said reluctantly, “I’ve heard those rumors, but I honestly find that hard to believe, except in really rare cases.”
    “Oh, admittedly, it’s rare, but there are rumors now and again. I heard it just the other day, as a matter of fact, about one of your malamute breeders. This is someone I won’t stoop to name, because I won’t stoop to gossip, but this is a very well-known local breeder, a reputable breeder, except that what people have been saying for a while is that she breeds too many litters, from what one hears.”
    “People are always saying that,” I pointed out. “Breeders always think that other people are overbreeding. But they’re not doing it themselves, naturally. What they’re doing is making an important contribution to improving the breed.” Mrs. Appleyard actually guffawed. She does that. I went on. “But, um, maybe I shouldn’t say this, but if the person you heard this about is Lois Metzler, it’s a misunderstanding.” It wasn’t a wild guess. There aren’t all that many well-known local malamute breeders; Lois Metzler bred at least twice as many puppies as any of the others; and everyone was, in fact, always saying that she bred way too many litters.
    “A name never passed my lips,” said Mrs. Appleyard.
    “Lois Metzler breeds a lot more dogs than I think she should or you think she should, but I’m positive that she would never sell to a pet shop. Never. So if you hear that rumor again...”
    “I’ll let it go in one ear and out the other,” Mrs. Appleyard said, thus, to my mind at least, confirming my guess that Lois Metzler had actually been the breeder in question. Then she changed the subject. “I heard that one of those animal rights lunatics released one of your dogs,” she said.
    “Not exactly,” I said. “I happened to... actually, don’t mention it to people, but I ended up meeting her. We had a long talk. We worked things out. She didn’t really understand what she was doing.”
    “A dog loose indoors at a show! This was your male?”
    “Yes. But nothing happened.”
    “If you don’t mind my saying so, Holly, you’re taking it much too lightly. Think of the consequences! If he’d gotten himself in a fight?”
    “This person, the young woman who did it, is... I felt so sorry for her, and she really won’t ever do it again. She’s very young and sort of lost. She was basically led astray by bad companions. She really was.”
    “And what makes you assume that her companions have suddenly changed?”
    “Well, for a start, I guess because I’ve become one of them.”
    “These animal rights people are dangerous,” Mrs. Appleyard boomed. “They’re convinced that the end justifies the means. They’ll say whatever they think is convenient at the moment, but when it comes down to what they do, they’ll stop at nothing. Absolutely nothing.