Evil Breeding

off the mouse pad, I signed on—unlimited access, another gift from my father— and discovered a couple of replies to my inquiries about Mrs. Dodge and the Morris and Essex shows. The previous responses had been sparse, probably because most people who’d been active in the dog fancy in the late thirties were either dead or not on-line, which in the popular view these days means the same thing. The first reply was from Sheila, whose last name I should have remembered but didn’t. She was on Dogwriters-L, the list for professional dog writers, of course. It read:
     
Hi, Holly!
Have you seen the Dog Fancy article on G. R. Dodge from a couple of years ago? Didn’t know you knew Motherway.
Sheila and the Woofs
     
    And the second:
     
Holly,
Have you checked the New York Times for coverage of Morris & Essex? There were long write-ups you shouldn’t miss. Too bad shows don’t get that coverage these days, huh?
I’d love to be a fly on the wall when you talk to Motherway. Or has the new cat got your tongue?
Harriet
Am/Can Ch. Firefly’s Stand By Me, CD, JH, CGC
     
    Harriet is not an American and Canadian champion, Companion Dog, Junior Hunter, and Canine Good Citizen, but she does belong to the Dog Writers Association of America and to numerous golden retriever clubs, including Yankee Golden Retriever Rescue. I know her through breed rescue. I help to find homes for homeless malamutes. Harriet lives in Connecticut. We see each other at shows and obedience events, and we exchange e-mail. E-mail saves on phone bills, but has its limitations. For instance, when someone says she’d love to be a fly on the wall and asks whether the cat’s got your tongue, you can’t instantly find out what she means. I sent an e-mail reply to ask just that.
    I remained fretful for the rest of the weekend. Steve and I went out to dinner on Saturday night. For once I had trouble deciding what to order. On Sunday we took our four dogs to the Berkshires for a hike made memorable by ticks and black-flies. When we got home, my Internet provider informed me that I had no new mail. Nonsense! I always have e-mail!
    I spent Monday morning rechecking my e-mail, surfing the Web, and otherwise pursuing my research. For example, while visiting a Web site devoted to generating anagrams, I discovered that the letters in Geraldine could be rearranged to spell, among other things, Danger lie, Angel dire, and Alien dreg. The yield from Geraldine R. Dodge included the sadly appropriate Aging elder odder. Holly Winter produced Wholly inert. Taking the anagram as a hint, I signed off. My snail mail brought an overdue notice from the electric company, a threat from the phone company, two kennel-supply catalogs from which I couldn’t afford to order anything, and a plain white envelope with my name and address in block capitals, a postmark blurred to illegibility, and nothing in the upper-left-hand comer.
    At first, I thought the envelope was empty. It wasn’t. It contained a long, narrow strip of paper with a blob of dry glue on one end. The glue, I soon realized, had originally fastened the strip of paper to a bottle of pills. An anonymous someone, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, had sent me a pharmaceutical company’s informational material about Soloxine, a drug commonly prescribed to treat hypothyroidism in dogs. Although I already knew what Soloxine was, I read the little brochure, mainly because I had no idea what else to do with it. Soloxine—levothyroxine sodium tablets—was a trademark of Daniels Pharmaceuticals, Inc., St. Petersburg, Florida. I sure could have used an all-expenses-paid week under a palm tree, but the uninformative envelope was now empty. A picture of the structural formula of the drug told me nothing. As I knew, Soloxine was indicated for thyroid-replacement therapy in dogs. Primary hypothyroidism, the common kind, was caused by atrophy of the thyroid gland. Hypothyroidism sometimes appeared in young large-breed dogs, but was more typically found in middle-aged and older dogs of all sizes. I’d read the characteristic signs of hypothyroidism dozens of times in articles in dog magazines. About half of the articles said that the condition was overdiagnosed; the other half claimed it was underdiagnosed. The classic picture was of an overweight, lethargic dog with a poor coat and a sad expression. The brochure didn’t mention some of the relatively subtle behavioral signs of hypothyroidism. Some hypothyroid dogs hated to