Bloodlines

thousands of Joe Rineharts and Bill Coakleys in this country? About the Puppy Luvs and the clones of Your Local Breeder?
    What was the worst that the AKC would—or even could —do to Walter Simms? I flipped to the Secretary’s Page of the Gazette and scanned the notices. A man in Virginia had been fined five hundred dollars and had his AKC privileges suspended for five years because a county court had convicted him of animal cruelty charges. A woman in Missouri had received the same fine and temporary suspension for failing to comply with the record-keeping and identification requirements of Chapter 3A of the Rules Applying to Registration and Dog Shows. If I managed somehow to get the AKC to inspect Simms’s records? The AKC isn’t even allowed to make unannounced inspections. Simms would be warned, and by the time the AKC got there, his paperwork might meet the damned requirements. The AKC inspector could report the filthy conditions to the local authorities, of course, and Mrs. Appleyard might finally be able to get some action going, but the process could take months or, for all I knew, years. And then? If Walter Simms lost the privilege of registering dogs in his own name, he’d register them to Cheryl or to Joe Rinehart or to any friend or relative who happened to be handy. If Simms were convicted of animal cruelty? He’d pay a small fine, maybe even go to jail for a few months, and then he’d be back in mass-market dogs again.
    I picked up the USDA list of licensed dealers and tried to fit it on the crowded shelf of loose material where it belonged. I couldn’t get it all the way in, and when I yanked at it, a pile of odds and ends tumbled to the floor. I knelt down and started to tidy up the spilled miscellany: an extra copy of the AKC obedience regulations, a pamphlet on how to play Frisbee with your dog, a photo of Kimi and my cousin Leah the day they earned their third Novice leg, a pamphlet called “You and Your New Puppy,” a few dozen premium lists and entry blanks for long-past shows and trials, a flier about the United Kennel Club, and a handful of Christmas cards I’d saved.
    I sat on the floor and leafed through the cards. Most showed photos of people’s dogs, but the one that caught my eye had a black-and-white drawing of a malamute under a Christmas tree. Clasped between his paws was a torn-open present, a package of dog biscuits. He held one in his mouth. A tag on the present showed the name of the dog, Cody. He’s real. He was rescued by the Illinois Alaskan Malamute Rescue Association, which sold the cards to raise funds. I opened the card and read the message: Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with us. The temperature of the hard wooden floor under me seemed to drop ten degrees.
    With us, right? Not with Kevin Dennehy and the Cambridge Police Department. Not with the American Kennel Club. Not with the United States Department of Agriculture, Jane M. Appleyard, the Eleanor J. Colley Humane Society, or the citizens of Afton. And let it begin ? From the beginning, instead of restoring peace to Missy and to myself, I’d tried to find people to do it for me. Let Kevin take advantage of a brutal murder to arrest Rinehart, Simms, Janice Coakley, and everyone else involved in the evil enterprise of mass-producing dogs. Let the AKC and the USDA close the bastards down. Let the humane society and the local citizenry raise an outcry that would rouse the authorities to action.
    Why does the puppy mill industry thrive? How do pet shops that sell dogs manage to stay in business? Because we all take the same attitude I’d been taking: Let there be peace on earth. Let it begin with someone else.
    For the first time since I lost Missy, I felt calm. Scared? You bet. But very calm.
    My first step was to call Steve, who sometimes arrives unannounced. Although a D.V.M. would have been an asset on my mission of peace, I wanted to keep him completely out of it.
    “I’m sick,” I announced.
    “You’re never sick,” he said.
    He was right. I tried to imagine what could possibly be wrong with me. “I must’ve eaten something at the show,” I said.
    “Three days ago? And you’re the one who’s always saying that dog show food—”
    “Coffee. I drank some dog show coffee.” At any dog show in the United States, including the posh benched shows, even Westminster, you’d swear that the pale liquid that comes out of those industrial-size percolators is yet another item in the