Evil Breeding

can’t tell one make of car from another unless I’m close enough to read the lettering on the front or rear, or unless the car is something so distinctive that anyone would know what it was. This car was behind mine. I couldn’t read anything written on it. It was definitely not a 1950s Cadillac with tail fins, an old Porsche, or a VW hug. It wasn’t a station wagon or a four-by-four. But I know my colors; I went to kindergarten. The car was tan. I had the feeling it might not be American. But my primary feeling about the car had nothing to do with its size, color, model, or country of origin. Rather, I had the strong sense of being followed.
     

Chapter Six
     
    ON SATURDAY MORNING , heavy rain pelted Cambridge. Deferring to Rowdy’s hatred of water at any temperature above thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, I left him at home and took Kimi for a three-mile run. After I’d returned, showered, and dressed, a glorious dog-training opportunity presented itself in the form of passing fire engines. With admirable presence of mind, instead of just seizing a clicker and treats to reinforce the dogs’ howling, I grabbed my tape recorder and dashed out the front door to Concord Avenue. The neighbors are used to me. If I ran outside naked and started shrieking about alien spaceships, the people up and down the block would shrug their shoulders and agree that I was practicing another new and probably harmless method of training dogs. Anyway, no one had me locked up, and although the taped sirens proved less provocative than the live performance, the dogs were already revved up from the real thing, and we made gratifying progress—and all this at a more civilized hour than two a.m., I might note.
    Then I checked my e-mail. I should perhaps explain that my office looks nothing like Mr. Motherway’s. For one thing, if I’d ever owned an antique desk, upholstered chairs, and Early American paintings, they’d long ago have been destroyed by dogs and replaced with the makeshift desk and other cheap graduate-student furnishings I now have. I really do wonder just how Geraldine R. Dodge managed to protect her art collection. And what about Isabella Stewart Gardner? She was a dog lover, too, and she owned Rembrandts! They hung on the wall, of course. Even so, it galls me to think that Mrs. Dodge’s and Mrs. Gardner’s dogs may have been more civilized than mine. Anyway, the only expensive objects in my office are my computer and printer, so mine is a perfect example of the famous paperless office possessed by everyone enamored of technology, which is to say that it is a papery mess of first drafts, second drafts, final versions, photocopies, notebooks, legal pads, and Post-its, all containing information that I’m going to discard or put on the computer someday other than this one.
    Instead of oil paintings of people, my walls display pictures of dogs and all sorts of other dog stuff, like a framed copy of Senator Vest’s famous Eulogy (“faithfull and true even to death”), certificates from the American Kennel Club attesting to titles my dogs have earned, and a bulletin board heavy with snapshots sent by people who read my column. The office also holds zillions of dog books and magazines, urns containing the cremated remains of departed canine loved ones, ribbons and trophies from dog shows and obedience trials, and, anomalously, the ugliest cat I have ever seen. In an effort at what Rita calls “positive reframing,” I named the cat after a famous Alaskan malamute, the late Ch. Kaila’s Paw Print, called Tracker, who was as beautiful as my feline Tracker is homely. Tracker is, however, far better-looking than she’d be if Rowdy and Kimi got hold of her. For a start, she’s alive. And yes, I am doing my damndest to train the dogs to accept Tracker. In the meantime, she and I share my office.
    My newfound addiction to cyberspace has been a boon to Tracker. When I’d first adopted her, about three months earlier, she’d hissed and fled at the sight of me. These days, she still hisses when I move her off the mouse pad, but after that, she tolerates my presence and even hangs around in a more or less normal way, not that she does anything really normal and Wonderful like bark, for example, or sing woo-woo-woo while wagging her tail in delight, but it has been a month since she’s scratched or bitten me and a month since I’ve sworn at her, so we are beginning to make friends.
    After politely asking Tracker to get