Evil Breeding

You shouldn’t have been left standing here.”
    As we shook hands, the dog rose and went to Mr. Motherway’s left side. Even in his master’s presence, this was not an ears-up, eyes-bright animal. The shepherd held his head low and moved as if completing a boring but necessary mission.
    I said that I’d been enjoying myself admiring his house. I’d always liked American primitive paintings, I added. I liked the sweetness and the naïveté. What I actually liked, although I didn’t say so to Mr. Motherway, was the depiction of dogs in American primitives. I loved the ones that showed a child or a group of children cuddling a stiff-looking, formal lapdog. Mr. Motherway didn’t have any of those, at least that I’d seen. I settled for saying that he had a wonderful collection.
    “Family legacy,” he replied modestly as he led me into the living room. “My stepfather collected in a small way. He introduced me to dogs, too. He had shepherds. He was the one who first took me to Morris and Essex, as I may have mentioned on the phone.” The reference to his stepfather caught me off guard. Barbara Altman, the fellow dog writer who’d put me on to Mr. Motherway, had warned me that he’d had a sister who died in Germany in the thirties. He never discussed her; the topic was off limits. I’d somehow assumed that the taboo extended beyond the sister to the rest of Motherway’s family—obviously, I’d been wrong.
    Mr. Motherway motioned me to a love seat that faced the immense fireplace. He took a wooden chair by the hearth. The dog lowered himself to rest at Mr. Motherway’s feet.
    “Do you remember what year that was?” I asked.
    “Well, it must have been 1928. I know it wasn’t the first year. Compared to what Mrs. Dodge did later, it was small. But even back then, it was an exhibitor’s show. She always went out of her way to make everything convenient. The trains that brought in the dogs had special baggage cars, and she arranged to have the dogs and the exhibitors transported from the trains. The estate, Giralda, was... Well, I wasn’t much more than a boy, and to me it looked like a castle out of a fairy tale. In later years, it got... Well, the word is spectacular. She kept enlarging the polo fields to make room for more rings and more tents, and the lawn would stretch as far as you could see. And there’d be trees all around, dogwoods blooming. It was extraordinary. Everything was tented. There was a luncheon tent. If you showed, Mrs. Dodge provided lunch for you. Don’t see much of that these days, do you?”
    On cue, I laughed. “These days, you’re lucky to be able to park in walking distance of the rings.”
    Mr. Motherway smiled. He had good teeth, obviously his own. “One year, can’t remember just when, she had a special area reserved for toys.” Toy breeds, I should perhaps add. Little dogs. “Special parking area,” he continued, “right by a big tent reserved for toys, right next to the rings, so no one had to lug anything. And the whole area was at the edge of the field, in the shade, as I recall. The show was always in May, late May, and it can get good and hot and humid in New Jersey in May, so she had tents everywhere and these orange beach umbrellas. There was a tower for the photographers to go up to get panoramas of the whole scene. I talked my way up that tower one time, and it was a sight to see: the trees, the acres of lawn, thousands of cars, fifty or sixty rings, dozens of tents, umbrellas, dogs, exhibitors, gawkers. Even from the ground, it was a remarkable site, like a giant carnival.”
    “I’d give anything to have been there,” I said truthfully. “What did she give the exhibitors for lunch?”
    Mr. Motherway looked taken aback. “Well, don’t know that I recall. Chicken, I suppose. It must have been chicken.”
    I’d always been curious about those lunches. These days, the club sponsoring a dog show provides a good lunch for the judges and either the same lunch or a less lavish one for the stewards, the volunteers who help the judges. Exhibitors pack their own picnics, or eat at caféterias or concession stands. I couldn’t get over the idea that Mrs. Dodge had served a civilized lunch, presumably a delicious one, to everyone who entered her show. Before I could press Mr. Motherway for details about the menus, a loud, horrible scream rang through the house. If the black dog hadn’t still been motionless at Mr. Motherway’s feet, I’d have assumed,